■ 






■ 






I ■ 



^H 



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■ 

inm 




Glass. 
Book. 



DISCUSSIONS 



ON 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, 
EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY REFORM. 



C H I E F L Y FROM THE EDINBURGH R E V I E W ; 

CORRECTED, VINDICATED, ENLARGED, 

IN NOTES AND APPENDICES, 



B i 

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART. 



" Truth, like a torch, the more it's shook it shines." 



LONDON: 

LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN AND LONGMANS 
EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN AND STEWART. 

M . D C C C . L 1 1. 






EDINBURGH; PRINTED BY JOHN HUGHES. 






^ 



This publication will not I hope be deemed super- 
fluous. — Its contents have, in great part, been collected 
and translated in France and Italy ; in Germany many 
of the Discussions have been separately translated ; and 
their general collection has once and again been recom- 
mended in the leading critical Journals of America. In 
this country also, a considerable number are comprised 
in the "Selections from the Edinburgh Eeview" by Mr 
Crosse. M. Peisse, the learned French translator, has 
added to the articles, published by him under the name 
of " Fragments de Philosophie," sundry important con- 
tributions of his own ; — an Introduction, an Appendix, 
and Notes. Of the last especially I have frequently 
availed myself. 

In reprinting these criticisms, I have made a few 
unimportant corrections ; and some not unimportant 
additions, — in length at least, for the new extends to 
above a half of the old. At the same time, I was not 
averse from evincing, by the way, the punctual accuracy of 
certain statements, advanced in these criticisms, which had 
been variously and, sometimes even, vehemently assailed. 
In one instance, the counter criticism was indeed of such 
a character, and came from such a quarter, that I could 
not in propriety let it pass without a full and formal refu- 
tation. 

In preparing an Appendix, supplementary of the pre- 
vious discussions relative to the English Universities, I 



[ vi ] 

insensibly involved myself in a complication of details, 
which, after a fruitless and wholly unexpected expendi- 
ture of time, I found that leisure and strength and patience 
all failed me either to disentangle or to complete ; I was 
therefore, in the end, constrained to limit the consideration, 
not only to Oxford exclusively, but exclusively to the edu- 
cation afforded in its fundamental faculty, that of Arts. 
And in reference even to this, had I anticipated the 
amount of tedious toil, which the mere collecting and 
verifying of the facts would cost, I might have been dis- 
posed to avoid what, though to me a real labour, is so 
disproportioned to any apparent result. 

Apart from the Appendices, the new matter, whether of 
text or notes, except where distinction was needless, is 
enclosed within square brackets. 

Edinburgh ; March 1852. 















CONTENTS. 



PHILOSOPHY 



PAGE 

I. On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned ; in refer- 
ence to Cousin's Infinito- Absolute, 1 

(Oct. 1829. — Edinburgh Review, Vol. 1., No. xcix., 
pp. 194-221.) 

II. Philosophy of Perception, 38 

(Oct. 1830— Vol. lii., No. ciii., pp. 158-207.) 

III. Johnson's Translation of Tennemann's Manual of 

the History of Philosophy, 08 

(Oct. 1832.— Vol. lvi, No. cxi., pp. 160- J 77.) 

IV. Logic. The recent English treatises on that 

science, 116 

(April 1833— Vol. lvi., No. cxv., pp. 194-238 ) 

V. Deaf and Dumb. History of their Instruction, in 

reference to Dalgarno, . 175 

(July 1835.— Vol. lxi., No. cxxiv., pp. 407-417.) 

VI. Idealism ; with reference to the scheme of Arthur 

Collier, 186 

(April 1839.— Vol. lxviii., No. cxxxviii., pp. 337-353.) 



\ 111 CONTENTS. 



LITERATURE. 

PAGE 
I, EPISTOL.E ObSCURORUM VlRORUM ; THE NATIONAL SATIRE 

of Germany, 203 

(March 1831.— Vol. liii., No. cv., pp. 180-210.) 

II. On the Revolutions of Medicine ; in reference to 

Cullen, 238 

(July 1832.— Vol. lv., No. ex., pp. 461-479.) 






EDUCATION. 

I. On the Study of Mathematics, as an exercise of 

Mind, 257 

(Jan. 1836— Vol. lxii., No. exxvi., pp. 409-455. Note, 
Vol. lxiii., No. exxvii., pp. 270-275.) 

II. On the Conditions of Classical Learning. With re- 
lation to the Defence of Classical Instruction, 
by Professor Pillans, 328 

(Oct. 1836.— Vol. lxiv., No. exxix., pp. 106-124.) 

III. On the Patronage and Superintendence of Uni- 
versities, 348 

(April 1834— Vol. lix., No. cxix., pp. 196-227.) 

IV. On the state of the English Universities, with 

more especial reference to Oxford, 386 

(June 1831— Vol. liii., No. cvi., pp. 384-427.) 

V. On the state of the English Universities, with 

MORE ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD. (SUPPLE- 
MENTAL.) 435 

(Dec. 1831.— Vol. liv.. No. cviii., pp. 478-504.) 



CONTENTS. IX 

PAGE 

VI. On the Eight of Dissenters to Admission into the 

English Universities, 464 

(Oct. 1834.— Vol. lx., No. cxxi., pp. 202-230.) 

VII. On the Eight of Dissenters to Admission into the 

English Universities. (Supplemental.) 509 

(Jan. 1835.— Vol. lx., No. cxxii., pp. 422-445.) 

VIII. Cousin on German Schools, 535 

(July 1833— Vol. lvii., No. cxvi., pp. 505-542.) 



I. APPENDIX, PHILOSOPHICAL. 

(A.) Conditions of the Thinkable systematised ; Alphabet 

of Human Thought, 577 

(B.) Philosophical Testimonies to the limitation of our 

Knowledge, from the limitation of our Faculties, ... 601 



II. APPENDIX, LOGICAL. 
(A.) Of Syllogism, its Kinds, Canons, Notations, &c, 614 

(B.) On Affirmation and Negation, — on Propositional 
Forms, — on Breadth and Depth, — on Syllogistic, and 
Syllogistic Notation, 621* 



III. APPENDIX, EDUCATIONAL. 

(A.) Academical Patronage and Eegulation, in reference 

to the University of Edinburgh, 621 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

B.) The Examination and Honours for a Degree in Arts, 
during Centuries established in the University op 
Louvain, 645 

(C.) On a Keform of the English Universities: with 
especial reference to Oxford ; and limited to the 
Faculty of Arts, 651 



Addenda, 743 

Corrigenda, 747 

Index, 749 



«^o o>^9l(^V> 



PHILOSOPHY 



I.-PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

IN REFERENCE TO COUSIN'S DOCTRINE 
OF THE INFINITO-ABSOLUTE.* 

(October, 1829.) 

Cours de Philosophie. Par M. Victor Cousin, Professeur de 
Philosophic a la Faculte des Lettres de Paris. — Introduction a 
VHistoire de la Philosophie. 8vo. Paris, 1828. 

The delivery of these Lectures excited an unparalleled sensation 
in Paris. Condemned to silence during the reign of Jesuit ascen- 
dency, M. Cousin, after eight years of honourable retirement, not 
exempt from persecution, had again ascended the Chair of Philo- 

* [Translated into French, by M. Peisse ; into Italian, by S. Lo Gatto : 
also in Cross's Selections from the Edinburgh Review. 

This article did not originate with myself. I was requested to write it by 
my friend, the late accomplished Editor of the Review, Professor Napier. 
Personally, I felt averse from the task. I was not unaware, that a discussion 
of the leading doctrine of the book would prove unintelligible, not only to 
" the general reader," but, with few exceptions, to our British metaphysi- 
cians at large. But, moreover, I was still farther disinclined to the under- 
taking, because it would behove me to come forward in overt opposition to 
a certain theory, which, however powerfully advocated, I felt altogether 
unable to admit ; whilst its author, M. Cousin, was a philosopher for whose 
genius and character I already had the warmest admiration, — an admiration 
which every succeeding year has only augmented, justified, and confirmed. 
Nor, in saying this, need I make any reservation. For I admire, even where 
I dissent ; and were M. Cousin's speculations on the Absolute utterly abo- 
lished, to him would still remain the honour, of doing more himself, and of 
contributing more to what has been done by others, in the furtherance of an 
enlightened philosophy, than any other living individual in France — I might 
say in Europe. Mr Napier, however, was resolute ; it was the first number 

A 



2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

sophy ; and the splendour with which he recommenced his acade- 
mical career, more than justified the expectation which his recent 
celebrity as a writer, and the memory of his earlier prelections, 
had inspired. Two thousand auditors listened, all with admira- 
tion, many with enthusiasm, to the eloquent exposition of doc- 
trines intelligible only to the few ; and the oral discussion of phi- 
losophy awakened in Paris, and in France, an interest unexampled 
since the days of Abclard. The daily journals found it necessary 
to gratify, by their earlier summaries, the impatient curiosity of 
the public ; and the lectures themselves, taken in short-hand, and 
corrected by the Professor, propagated weekly the influence of 
his instruction to the remotest provinces of the kingdom. 

Nor are the pretensions of this doctrine disproportioned to the 
attention which it has engaged. It professes nothing less than to 
be the complement and conciliation of all philosophical opinion ; 
and its author claims the glory of placing the key-stone in the 
arch of science, by the discovery of elements hitherto unobserved 
among the facts of consciousness. 

Before proceeding to consider the claims of M. Cousin to origi- 
nality, and of his doctrine to truth, it is necessary to say a few 
words touching the state and relations of philosophy in France. 

After the philosophy of Descartes and Malebranche had sunk 
into oblivion, and from the time that Condillac, exaggerating the 
too partial principles of Locke, had analysed all knowledge into 
sensation, Sensualism, (or, more correctly, Sensuism,) as a psycho- 
logical theory of the origin of our cognitions, became, in France, 

of the Review under his direction ; and the criticism was hastily written. 
In this country the reasonings were of course not understood, and naturally, 
for a season, declared incomprehensible. Abroad, in France, Germany, Italy, 
and latterly in America, the article has been rated higher than it deserves. 
The illustrious thinker, against one of whose doctrines its argument is direct- 
ed, was the first to speak of it in terms which, though I feel their generosity, 
I am ashamed to quote. I may, however, state, that maintaining always 
his opinion, M. Cousin, (what is rare, especially in metaphysical discussions,) 
declared, that it was neither unfairly combated nor imperfectly under- 
stood. — In connection with this criticism, the reader should compare what 
M. Cousin has subsequently stated in defence and illustration of his sys- 
tem, in his Preface to the new edition of the Introduction a CHistoire de 
la Philosophie, and Appendix to the fifth lecture (QZuvres,. Serie II. Tome i. 
pp. vii. ix., and pp. 112-129 ;) — in his Preface to the second edition, and his 
Advertisement to the third edition of the Fragments Philosophiques (CEuvres, 
S. III. T. iv.)— and in his Prefatory Notice to the Pensees de Pascal {CEuvres, 
S. IV. T. i.) — On the other hand, M. Peisse has ably advocated the coun- 
terview, in his Preface and Appendix to the Fragments de Philosophie, &c] 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE ; AND IN SCOTLAND. 3 

not only the dominant, but almost the one exclusive opinion. It 
was believed that reality and truth were limited to experience, 
and experience was limited to the sphere of sense ; while the 
very highest faculties of mind were deemed adequately explained 
when recalled to perceptions, elaborated, purified, sublimated, and 
transformed. From the mechanical relations of sense with its 
object, it was attempted to solve the mysteries of will and intel- 
ligence ; the philosophy of mind was soon viewed as correlative 
to the physiology of organisation. The moral nature of man was 
at last formally abolished, in its identification with his physical : 
mind became a reflex of matter ; thought a secretion of the brain. 

A doctrine so melancholy in its consequences, and founded on 
principles thus partial and exaggerated, could not be permanent : 
a reaction was inevitable. The recoil, which began about twenty 
years ago, has been gradually increasing ; and now it is perhaps 
even to be apprehended, that its intensity may become excessive. 
As the poison was of foreign growth, so also has been the antidote. 
The doctrine of Condillac was, if not a corruption, a development, 
of the doctrine of Locke ; and, in returning to a better philosophy, 
the French are still obeying an impulsion communicated from 
without. This impulsion may be traced to two different sources, — 
to the philosophy of Scotland, and to the philosophy of Germany. 

In Scotland, a philosophy had sprung up, which, though pro- 
fessing, equally with the doctrine of Condillac, to build only on 
experience, did not, like that doctrine, limit experience to the 
relations of sense and its objects. Without vindicating to man 
more than a relative knowledge of existence, and restricting the 
science of mind to an observation of the fact of consciousness, it, 
however, analysed that fact into a greater number of more import- 
ant elements than had been recognised in the school of Condillac. 
It showed that phenomena were revealed in thought which could 
not be resolved into any modification of sense, — external or inter- 
nal. It proved that intelligence supposed principles, which, as 
the conditions of its activity, can not be the results of its opera- 
tion ; that the mind contained knowleges, which, as primitive, 
universal, necessary, are not to be explained as generalizations 
from the contingent and individual, about which alone all expe- 
rience is conversant. The phenomena of mind were thus distin- 
guished from the phenomena of matter ; and if the impossibility 
of materialism were not demonstrated, there was, at least, demon- 
strated the impossibility of its proof. 

This philosophy, and still more the spirit of this philosophy, 



4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

was calculated to exert a salutary influence on the French. And 
such an influence it did exert. For a time, indeed, the truth 
operated in silence ; and Eeid and Stewart had already modified 
the philosophy of France, before the French were content to 
acknowledge themselves their disciples. In the works of Dege- 
rando and Laromiguiere, may be traced the influence of Scottish 
speculation; but it is to Royer-Collard, and, more recently, to 
Jouffroy, that our countrymen are indebted for a full acknow- 
ledgment of their merits, and for the high and increasing esti- 
mation in which their doctrines are now held in France. M. 
Royer-Collard, whose authority has, in every relation, been exert- 
ed only for the benefit of his country, and who, once great as a 
professor, is now not less illustrious as a statesman, in his lectures, 
advocated with distinguished ability the principles of the Scottish 
school ; modestly content to follow, while no one was more entitled 
to lead. M. Jouffroy, by his recent translation of the works of 
Dr Reid, and by the excellent preface to his version of Mr Dugald 
Stewart's " Outlines of Moral Philosophy," has likewise power- 
fully co-operated to the establishment, in France, of a philosophy 
equally opposed to the exclusive Sensualism of Condillac, and to 
the exclusive Rationalism of the new German school. 

Germany may be regarded, latterly at least, as the metaphysi- 
cal antipodes of France. The comprehensive and original genius 
of Leibnitz, itself the ideal abstract of the Teutonic character, had 
reacted powerfully on the minds of his countrymen ; and Rational- 
ism, (more properly IntellectuaUsm*) has, from his time, always 
remained the favourite philosophy of the Germans. On the prin- 
ciple of this doctrine, it is in Reason alone that truth and reality 
are to be found. Experience affords only the occasions on which 
intelligence reveals to us the necessary and universal notions of 
which it is the complement ; and these notions constitute at once 

* [On the modern commutation of Intellect or Intelligence (No£j, Mens, 
Intellectus, Verstand), and Reason (Aoyog, Ratio, Vernunft), see Disser- 
tations on Reid, pp. 668, 669, 693. (This has nothing to do with the con- 
fusion of Reason and Reasoning.) Protesting, therefore, against the abuse, 
I historically employ the terms as they were employed by the philosophers 
here commemorated. This unfortunate reversal has been propagated to the 
French philosophy, and also adopted in England by Coleridge and his fol- 
lowers. — I may here notice that I use the term Understanding, not for the 
noetic faculty, intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoetic 
or discursive faculty, in its widest signification, for the faculty of relations 
or comparison ; and thus in the meaning in which Verstand is now employed 
by the Germans. In this sense I have been able to be uniformly consistent.] 



PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 5 

the foundation of all reasoning, and the guarantee of our whole 
knowledge of reality. Kant, indeed, pronounced the philosophy 
of Rationalism a mere fabric of delusion. He declared that a 
science of existence was beyond the compass of our faculties ; that 
pure reason, as purely subjective,* and conscious of nothing but 

* In the philosophy of mind, subjective denotes what is to be referred to 
the thinking subject, the Ego ; objective what belongs to the object of 
thought, the Non-Ego. — It may be safe, perhaps, to say a few words in 
vindication of our employment of these terms. By the Greeks the word 
vKoxstftevou was equivocally employed to express either the object of know- 
ledge, (the materia circa quam,) or the subject of existence, (the materia in 
qua.) The exact distinction of subject and object was first made by the 
schoolmen 5 and to the schoolmen the vulgar languages are principally 
indebted for what precision and analytic subtilty they possess. These cor- 
relative terms correspond to the first and most important distinction in 
philosophy ; they embody the original antithesis in consciousness of self 
and not-self, — a distinction which, in fact, involves the whole science of 
mind ; for psychology is nothing more than a determination of the sub- 
jective and the objective, in themselves, and in their reciprocal relations. 
Thus significant of the primary and most extensive analysis in philoso- 
phy, these terms, in their substantive and adjective forms, passed from the 
schools into the scientific language of Telesius, Campanella, Berigardus, 
Gassendi, Descartes, Spinosa, Leibnitz, Wolf, &c. Deprived of these 
terms, the Critical philosophy, indeed the whole philosophy of Germany, 
would be a blank. In this country, though familiarly employed in scien- 
tific language, even subsequently to the time of Locke, the adjective 
forms seem at length to have dropt out of the English tongue. That 
these words waxed obsolete was perhaps caused by the ambiguity which 
had gradually crept into the signification of the substantives. Object, 
besides its proper signification, came to be abusively applied to denote 
motive, end, final cause (a meaning not recognised by Johnson). This 
innovation was probably borrowed from the French, in whose language the 
word had been similarly corrupted after the commencement of the last cen- 
tury (Diet, de Trevoux, voce Objet.) Subject in English, as sujet in French, 
had been also perverted into a synonyme for object, taken in its proper 
meaning, and had thus returned to the original ambiguity of the correspond- 
ing term in Greek. It is probable that the logical application of the word 
(subject of attribution or predication) facilitated or occasioned this confusion. 
In using the terms, therefore, we think that an explanation, but no apology, 
is required. The distinction is of paramount importance, and of infinite 
application, not only in philosophy proper, but in grammar, rhetoric, criti- 
cism, ethics, politics, jurisprudence, theology. It is adequately expressed 
by no other terms ; and if these did not already enjoy a prescriptive right, 
as denizens of the language, it cannot be denied, that, as strictly analogical, 
they would be well entitled to sue out their naturalization. — [Not that 
these terms were formerly always employed in the same signification and 
contrast which they noAv obtain. For a history of these variations, see Dis- 



6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

itself, was therefore unable to evince the reality of aught beyond 
the phenomena of its personal modifications. But scarcely had 
the critical philosopher accomplished the recognition of this im- 
portant principle, the result of which was, to circumscribe the 
field of speculation by narrow bounds ; than from the very dis- 
ciples of his school there arose philosophers, who, despising the 
contracted limits, and humble results, of a philosophy of obser- 
vation, re-established, as the predominant opinion, a bolder and 
more uncompromising Rationalism than any that had ever pre- 
viously obtained for their countrymen the character of philosophic 
visionaries — 

" Gens ratione ferox, et mentem pasta chima^ris.' 1 * 
(" Minds fierce for reason, and on fancies fed.") 

Founded by Fichte, but evolved by Schelling, this doctrine 
regards experience as unworthy of the name of science : because, 
as only of the phenomenal, the transitory, the dependent, it is 
only of that which, having no reality in itself, cannot be esta- 
blished as a valid basis of certainty and knowledge. Philosophy 
must, therefore, either be abandoned, or we must be able to seize 
the One, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, immediately and in 
itself. And this they profess to do by a kind of intellectual 
vision.} In this act, reason, soaring not only above the world of 

sertations on Reid, p. 806, sq. — Since this article was written, the words 
have in this country re-entered on their ancient rights; they are now in 
common use.] 

* [This line, which was quoted from memory, has, I find, in the original, 
" furens;" therefore translated — " Minds mad with reasoning — and fancy- 
fed." The author certainly had in his eye the " ratione insanias " of Terence. 
It is from a satyr e by Abraham Remi, who, in the former half of the seven- 
teenth century, was Professor Royal of Eloquence in the University of 
Paris ; and it referred to the disputants of the Irish College in that illustrious 
school. The " Hibernian Logicians" were, indeed, long famed over the 
continent of Europe, for their acuteness, pugnacity, and barbarism ; as is 
recorded by Patin, Bayle, Le Sage, and many others. The learned Menage 
was so delighted with the verse, as to declare, that he would give his best 
benefice (and he enjoyed some fat ones) to have written it. It applies, not 
only with real, but with verbal, accuracy to the German Rationalists; who 
in Philosophy (as Aristotle has it), "in making reason omnipotent, show 
their own impotence of reason," and in Theology (as Charles II. said of 
Isaac Vossius), — " believe every thing but the Bible."] 

f " [Intellectuelle Anschauuny ■." — This is doubly wrong. — 1°, In gram- 
matical rigour, the word in German ought to hstve been " intellectua/e." 
2°, In philosophical consistency the intuition ought not to have been called 
by its authors (Fichte and Schelling) intellectual. For, though this be, in 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 7 

sense, but beyond the sphere of personal consciousness, boldly 
places itself at the very centre of absolute being, with which it 
claims to be, in fact, identified ; and thence surveying existence 
in itself, and in its relations, unveils to us the nature of the Deity, 
and explains, from first to last, the derivation of all created 
things. 

M. Cousin is the apostle of Rationalism in France, and we are 
willing to admit that the doctrine could not have obtained a more 
eloquent or devoted advocate. For philosophy he has suffered ; 
to her ministry he has consecrated himself — devoted without 
reserve his life and labours. Neither has he approached the 
sanctuary with unwashed hands. The editor of Proclus and 
Descartes, the translator and interpreter of Plato, and the pro- 
mised expositor of Kant, will not be accused of partiality in the 
choice of his pursuits ; while his two works, under the title of 
Philosophical Fragments, bear ample evidence to the learning, 
elegance, and distinguished ability of their author. Taking him 
all in all, in France M. Cousin stands alone : nor can we contem- 
plate his character and accomplishments, without the sincerest 
admiration, even while we dissent from the most prominent prin- 
ciple of his philosophy. The development of his system, in all its 
points, betrays the influence of German speculation on his opi- 
nions. His theory is not, however, a scheme of exclusive 
Rationalism; on the contrary, the peculiarity of his doctrine 
consists in the attempt to combine the philosophy of experience, 
and the philosophy of pure reason, into one. The following is a 
concise statement of the fundamental positions of his system : 

Reason, or intelligence, has three integrant elements, affording 
three regulative principles, which at once constitute its nature, 
and govern its manifestations. These three ideas severally sup- 
pose each other, and, as inseparable, are equally essential and 
equally primitive. They are recognised by Aristotle and by 
Kant, in their several attempts to analyse intelligence into its 
principles ; but though the categories of both philosophers com- 
prise all the elements of thought, in neither list are these elements 
naturally co-arranged, or reduced to an ultimate simplicity. 

fact, absolutely more correct, yet relatively it is a blunder ; for the intuition, 
as intended by them, is of their higher faculty, the Reason (Vernunft), and 
not of their lower, the Understanding or Intellect (Verstand). In modern 
German Philosophy, Verstand is always translated by lntellectus j and this 
again corresponds to Nov-.] 



8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

The first of these ideas, elements, or laws, though funda- 
mentally one, our author variously expresses, by the terms unity, 
identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, &c. ; 
(we would briefly call it the unconditioned.) The second, he 
denominates plurality, difference, phenomenon, relative cause, 
the finite, determined thought, &c. ; (we would style it the con- 
ditioned.) These two elements are relative and correlative. The 
first, though absolute, is not conceived as existing absolutely in 
itself; it is conceived as an absolute cause, as a cause which can- 
not but pass into operation; in other words, the first element 
must manifest itself in the second. The two ideas are thus con- 
nected together as cause and effect ; each is only realised through 
the other ; and tins their connexion, or correlation, is the third inte- 
grant element of intelligence. 

Reason, or intelligence, in which these ideas appear, and which, 
in fact, they make up, is not individual, is not ours, is not even 
human ; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to us, is our 
free and voluntary activity ; what is not free and not voluntary, 
is adventitious to man, and does not constitute an integrant part 
of his individuality. Intelligence is conversant with truth ; truth, 
as necessary and universal, is not the creature of my volition ; 
and reason, which, as the subject of truth, is also universal and 
necessary, is consequently impersonal. We see, therefore, by a 
light which is not ours, and reason is a revelation of God in man. 
The ideas of which we are conscious, belong not to us, but to ab- 
solute intelligence. They constitute, in truth, the very mode and 
manner of its existence. For consciousness is only possible under 
plurality and difference, and intelligence is only possible through 
consciousness. 

The divine nature is essentially comprehensible. For the three 
ideas constitute the nature of the Deity; and the very nature 
of ideas is to be conceived. God, in fact, exists to us, only in so 
far as he is known; and the degree of our knowledge must 
always determine the measure of our faith. The relation of God 
to the universe is therefore manifest, and the creation easily un- 
derstood. To create, is not to make something out of nothing, 
for this is contradictory, but to originate from self. We create 
so often as we exert our free causality, and something is created 
by us, when something begins to be by virtue of the free cau- 
sality which belongs to us. To create is, therefore, to cause, not 
with nothing, but with the very essence of our being — with our 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 9 

force, our will, our personality. The divine creation is of the 
same character. God, as he is a cause, is able to create ; as he 
is an absolute cause, he cannot but create. In creating the uni- 
verse, he does not draw it from nothing ; he draws it from him- 
self. The creation of the universe is thus necessary ; it is a 
.manifestation of the Deity, but not the Deity absolutely in him- 
self ; it is God passing into activity, but not exhausted in the act. 

The universe created, the principles which determined the 
creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind. 

Two ideas and their connection explain the intelligence of God ; 
two laws in their counterpoise and correlation explain the material 
universe. The law of Expansion is the movement of unity to 
variety ; the law of Attraction is the return of variety to unity. 

In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The 
study of consciousness is psychology. Man is the microcosm of 
existence ; consciousness, within a narrow focus, concentrates a 
knowledge of the universe and of God ; psychology is thus the 
abstract of all science, human and divine. As in the external 
world, all phenomena may be reduced to the two great laws of 
Action and Reaction ; so, in the internal, all the facts of conscious- 
ness may be reduced to one fundamental fact, comprising in like 
manner two principles and their correlation ; and these principles 
are again the One or the Infinite, the Many or the Finite, and 
the Connection of the infinite and finite. 

In every act of consciousness we distinguish a Self or Ego, and 
something different from self, a Non-ego ; each limited and modi- 
fied by the other. These, together, constitute the finite element, 
But at the same instant when we are conscious of these existences, 
plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise of a 
superior unity in which they are contained, and by which they 
are explained ; — a unity absolute as they are conditioned, sub- 
stantive as they are phenomenal, and an infinite cause as they 
are finite causes. This unity is God, The fact of consciousness 
is thus a complex phenomenon, comprehending three several 
terms : 1°, The idea of the Ego and Non-ego as Finite ; 2°, The 
idea of something else as Infinite ; and, 3°, The idea of the Rela- 
tion of the finite element to the infinite. These elements are 
revealed in themselves and in their mutual connexion, in every 
act of primitive or Spontaneous consciousness. They can also be 
reviewed by Reflection in a voluntary act ; but here reflection 
distinguishes, it does not create. The three ideas, the three 



10 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

categories of intelligence, are given in the original act of instinc- 
tive apperception, obscurely, indeed, and without contrast. Re- 
flection analyses and discriminates the elements of this primary 
synthesis ; and as will is the condition of reflection, and will at 
the same time is personal, the categories, as obtained through 
reflection, have consequently the appearance of being also personal 
and subjective. It was this personality of reflection that misled 
Kant : caused him to overlook or misinterpret the fact of spon- 
taneous consciousness ; to individualise intelligence ; and to collect 
under this personal reason all that is conceived by us as necessary 
and universal. But as, in the spontaneous intuition of reason, 
there is nothing voluntary, and consequently nothing personal ; 
and as the truths which intelligence here discovers, come not from 
ourselves ; we have a right, up to a certain point, to impose these 
truths on others as revelations from on high : while, on the con- 
trary, reflection being wholly personal, it would be absurd to im- 
pose on others, what is the fruit of our individual operations. 
Spontaneity is the principle of religion ; reflection of philosophy. 
Men agree in spontaneity ; they differ in reflection. The former 
is necessarily veracious ; the latter is naturally delusive. 

The condition of Reflection is separation : it illustrates by dis- 
tinguishing ; it considers the different elements apart, and while 
it contemplates one, it necessarily throws the others out of view. 
Hence, not only the possibility, but the necessity, of error. The 
primitive unity, supposing no distinction, admits of no error ; 
reflection in discriminating the elements of thought, and in con- 
sidering one to the exclusion of others, occasions error, and a 
variety in error. He who exclusively contemplates the element 
of the Infinite, despises him who is occupied with the idea of the 
Finite ; and vice versa. It is the wayward development of the 
various elements of intelligence, which determines the imperfec- 
tions and varieties of individual character. Men under this partial 
and exclusive development, are but fragments of that humanity 
which can only be fully realised in the harmonious evolution of 
all its principles. What Reflection is to the individual, History 
is to the human race. The difference of an epoch consists exclu- 
sively in the partial development of some one element of intelli- 
gence in a prominent portion of mankind ; and as there are only 
three such elements, so there are only three grand epochs in the 
history of man. 

A knowledge of the elements of reason, of their relations and 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 11 

of their laws, constitutes not merely Philosophy, but is the con- 
dition of a History of Philosophy. The history of human reason, 
or the history of philosophy, must be rational and philosophic. 
It must be philosophy itself, with all its elements, in all their 
relations, and under all their laws, represented in striking cha- 
racters by the hands of time and of history, in the manifested 
progress of the human mind. The discovery and enumeration of 
all the elements of intelligence enable us to survey the progress 
of speculation from the loftiest vantage ground ; it reveals to us 
the laws by which the development of reflection or philosophy is 
determined ; and it supplies us with a canon by which the ap- 
proximation of the different systems to the truth may be finally 
ascertained. And what are the results ? Sensualism, Idealism, 
Scepticism, Mysticism, are all partial and exclusive views of the 
elements of intelligence. But each is false only as it is incomplete. 
They are all true in what they affirm ; all erroneous in what they 
deny. Though hitherto opposed, they are, consequently, not 
incapable of coalition; and, in fact, can only obtain their con- 
summation in a powerful Eclecticism, — a system which shall com- 
prehend them all. This Eclecticism is realised in the doctrine 
previously developed; and the possibility of such a catholic 
philosophy was first afforded by the discovery of M. Cousin, 
made so long ago as the year 1817, — " that consciousness con- 
tained many more phenomena than had previously been sus- 
pected." 

The present course is at once an exposition of these principles, 
as a true theory of philosophy, and an illustration of the mode 
in which this theory is to be applied, as a rule of criticism in 
the history of philosophical opinion. As the justice of the appli- 
cation must be always subordinate to the truth of the principle, 
we shall confine ourselves exclusively to a consideration of M. 
Cousin's system, viewed absolutely in itself. This, indeed, we 
are afraid will prove comparatively irksome ; and, therefore, 
solicit indulgence, not only for the unpopular nature of the dis- 
cussion, but for the employment of language which, from the 
total neglect of these speculations in Britain, will necessarily 
appear abstruse — not merely to the general reader. 

Now, it is manifest that the whole doctrine of M. Cousin is 
involved in the proposition, — that the Unconditioned, the Abso- 
lute, the Infinite, is immediately knoivn in consciousness, and this 
ty difference, plurality, and relation. The unconditioned, as an 



12 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

original element of knowledge, is the generative principle of his 
system, but common to him with others; whereas the mode in 
which the possibility of this knowledge is explained, affords its 
discriminating peculiarity. The other positions of his theory, as 
deduced from this assumption, may indeed be disputed, even if 
the antecedent be allowed ; but this assumption disproved, every 
consequent in his theory is therewith annihilated. The recogni- 
tion of the absolute as a constitutive principle of intelligence, our 
author regards as at once the condition and the end of philosophy ; 
and it is on the discovery of this principle in the fact of conscious- 
ness, that he vindicates to himself the glory of being the founder 
of the new eclectic, or the one catholic, philosophy. The determi- 
nation of this cardinal point will thus briefly satisfy us touching 
the claim and character of the system. To explain the nature of 
the problem itself, and the sufficiency of the solution propounded 
by M. Cousin, it is necessary to premise a statement of the 
opinions which may be entertained regarding the Unconditioned, 
as an immediate object of knowledge and of thought. 

These opinions may be reduced to four. — 1°, The Uncon- 
ditioned is incognisablc and inconceivable ; its notion being only 
negative of the conditioned, which last can alone be positively 
known or conceived. — 2°, It is not an object of knowledge ; but 
its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more 
than a mere negation of the conditioned. — 3°, It is cognisable, 
but not conceivable ; it can be known by a sinking back into 
identity with the absolute, but is incomprehensible by conscious- 
ness and reflection, which are only of the relative and the dif- 
ferent. — 4°, It is cognisable and conceivable by consciousness and 
reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality. 

The first of these opinions we regard as true ; the second is 
held by Kant ; the third by Schelling ; and the last by our 
author. 

1. In our opinion, the mind can conceive, and consequently can 
know, only the limited, and the conditionally limited. The uncon- 
ditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the unconditionally limited, 
or the Absolute, cannot positively be construed to the mind ; they 
can be conceived, only by a thinking away from, or abstraction 
of, those very conditions under which thought itself is realised ; 
consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only negative, — 
negative of the conceivable itself. For example, on the one hand 
we can positively conceive, neither an absolute whole, that is, a 



REVIEWER'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 13 

whole so great, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative part of 
a still greater whole ; nor an absolute part, that is, a part so small, 
that we cannot also conceive it as a relative whole, divisible into 
smaller parts. On the other hand, we cannot positively repre- 
sent, or realise, or construe to the mind (as here understanding and 
imagination coincide *), an infinite whole, for this could only be 
done by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite wholes, which 
would itself require an infinite time for its accomplishment ; nor, 
for the same reason, can we follow out in thought an infinite divi- 
sibility of parts. The result is the same, whether we apply the 
process to limitation in space, in time, or in degree. The uncon- 
ditional negation, and the unconditional affirmation of limitation ; 
in other words, the infinite and the absolute, properly so called,] 
are thus equally inconceivable to us. 

* [The Understanding, thought proper, notion, concept, &c, may coincide 
or not with Imagination, representation proper, image, &c. The two facul- 
ties do not coincide in a general notion ; for we cannot represent Man or 
Horse in an actual image without individualising the universal ; and thus 
contradiction emerges. But in the individual, say, Socrates or Bucephalus, 
they do coincide ; for I see no valid ground why we should not think, in the 
strict sense of the word, or conceive the individuals which we represent. Tn 
like manner there is no mutual contradiction between the image and the 
concept of the Infinite or Absolute, if these be otherwise possible ; for there 
is not necessarily involved the incompatibility of the one act of cognition 
with the other.] 

f It is right to observe, that though we are of opinion that the terms, 
Infinite and Absolute, and Unconditioned, ought not to be confounded, and 
accurately distinguish them in the statement of our own view ; yet, in 
speaking of the doctrines of those by whom they are indifferently employed, 
Ave have not thought it necessary, or rather we have found it impossible, to 
adhere to the distinction. The Unconditioned in our use of language denotes 
the genus of which the Infinite and Absolute are the species. 

[The term Absolute is of a twofold (if not threefold) ambiguity, correspond- 
ing to the double (or treble) signification of the word in Latin. 

1. Absolutum means what is freed or loosed; in which sense the Absolute 
will be what is aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, depen- 
dence, &c, and thus is tantamount to to dnrohvrov of the lower Greeks. In 
this meaning the Absolute is not opposed to the Infinite. 

2. Absolutum means finished, perfected, completed; in which sense the Ab- 
solute will be what is out of relation, &c, as finished, perfect, complete, 
total, and thus corresponds to to 'okov and to r&etou of Aristotle. In this 
acceptation, — and it is that in which for myself I exclusively use it, — the 
Absolute is diametrically opposed to, is contradictory of, the Infinite. 

Besides these two meanings, there is to be noticed the use of the word, 
for the most part in its adverbial form ; — absolutely (absolute) in the sense of 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the 
conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of 
positive thought — thought necessarily supposes conditions. To 
think is to condition ; and conditional limitation is the fundamental 
law of the possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot 
outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle 
outsoar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he 
may be supported ; so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of 
limitation, within and through which exclusively the possibility of 
thought is realised. Thought is only of the conditioned ; because, 
as we have said, to think is simply to condition. The absolute is 
conceived merely by a negation of conceivability ; and all that we 
know, is only known as 

" won from the void and formless infinite.' 1 '' 

How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought is only of the 
conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the profoundest 
admiration. Thought cannot transcend consciousness ; conscious- 
ness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and object 
of thought, known only in correlation, and mutually limiting each 
other ; while, independently of this, all that we know either of 
subject or object, cither of mind or matter, is only a knowledge 
in each of the particular, of the plural, of the diiferent, of the 
modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the consequence of 
this doctrine is, — that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science 
of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the particular, 
we admit, that we can never, in our highest generalisations, rise 
above the finite ; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, 
can be nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifesta- 
tions of an existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to 
recognise as beyond the reach of philosophy, — in the language of 
St Austin, — " cognoscendo ignorari, et ignorando cognosci." 

The conditioned is the mean between two extremes, — two incon- 
ditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be con- 
ceived as possible, but of which, on the principles of contradiction 
and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. On this 
opinion, therefore, reason is shown to be weak, but not deceitful. 

simply, simplicittr, «7rAaS?), that is, considered in and for itself — considered 
not in relation. This holds a similar analogy to the two former meanings 
of Absolute, which the Indefinite (jo do^arov) does to the Infinite (jo ol<7ru%ou). 
It is subjective as they are objective ; it is in our thought as they are in 
their own existence. This application is to be discounted, as here irrelevant.] 



KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 15 

The mind is not represented as conceiving two propositions sub- 
versive of each other, as equally possible ; but only, as unable to 
understand as possible, either of two extremes ; one of which, 
however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is compelled 
to recognise as true. We are thus taught the salutary lesson, 
that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the mea- 
sure of existence ; and are warned from recognising the domain 
of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of 
our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the 
very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the rela- 
tive and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something 
unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality.* 

2. The second opinion, that of Kant, is fundamentally the same 
as the preceding. Metaphysic, strictly so denominated, the phi- 
losophy of Existence, is virtually the doctrine of the unconditioned. 
From Xenophanes to Leibnitz, the infinite, the absolute, the un- 
conditioned, formed the highest principle of speculation ; but from 
the dawn of philosophy in the school of Elea until the rise of the 
Kantian philosophy, no serious attempt was made to investigate 
the nature and origin of this notion (or notions) as a psychological 
phenomenon. Before Kant, philosophy was rather a deduction 
from principles, than an inquiry concerning principles them- 
selves. At the head of every system a cognition figured, which 
the philosopher assumed in conformity to his views ; but it was 
rarely considered necessary, and more rarely attempted, to 
ascertain the genesis, and determine the domain, of this notion 
or judgment, previous to application. In his first Critique, Kant 
undertakes a regular survey of consciousness. He professes 
to analyse the conditions of human knowledge, — to mete out 
its limits, — to indicate its point of departure, — and to deter- 
mine its possibility. That Kant accomplished much, it would 
be prejudice to deny ; nor is his service to philosophy the less, 

* [True, therefore, are the declarations of a pious philosophy: — " A God 
understood would be no God at all ; " — " To think that God is, as we can 
think him to be, is blasphemy." — The Divinity, in a certain sense, is 
revealed ; in a certain sense is concealed : He is at once known and unknown. 
But the last and highest consecration of all true religion, must be an altar 
— ' AyuuoTa Qeu — " To the unknown and unknowable God.'*'' In this consum- 
mation, nature and revelation, paganism and Christianity, are at one : and 
from either source the testimonies are so numerous that I must refrain 
from quoting any. — Am I wrong in thinking, that M. Cousin would not 
repudiate this doctrine ?] 



16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE I NCOND1TIONED. 

that his success has been more decided in the subversion of error 
than in the establishment of truth. The result of his examination 
was the abolition of the metaphysical sciences, — of rational psy- 
chology, ontology, speculative theology, &c, as founded on mere 
petitiones principlorum. Existence is revealed to us only under 
specific modifications, and these are known only under the con- 
ditions of our faculties of knowledge. " Things in themselves," 
Matter, Mind, God, — all, in short, that is not finite, relative, and 
phenomenal, as bearing no analogy to our faculties, is beyond the 
verge of our knowledge. Philosophy was thus restricted to the 
observation and analysis of the phamomcna of consciousness ; and 
what is not explicitly or implicitly given in a fact of conscious- 
ness, is condemned, as transcending the sphere of a legitimate 
speculation. A knowledge of the unconditioned is declared impos- 
sible ; cither immediately, as a notion, or mediately, as an inference. 
A demonstration of the absolute from the relative is logically 
absurd ; as in such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion 
what is not distributed in the premises : And an immediate know- 
ledge of the unconditioned is equally impossible. — But here we 
think his reasoning complicated, and his reduction incomplete. 
We must explain ourselves. 

While we regard as conclusive, Kant's analysis of Time and 
Space into conditions of thought, we cannot help viewing his 
deduction of the " Categories of Understanding," and the " Ideas 
of speculative Reason," as the work of a great but perverse inge- 
nuity. The categories of understanding are merely subordinate 
forms of the conditioned. Why not, therefore, generalise the 
Conditioned — Existence conditioned, as the supreme category, or 
categories, of thought ? — and if it were necessary to analyse this 
form into its subaltern applications, why not develope these imme- 
diately out of the generic principle, instead of preposterously, and 
by a forced and partial analogy, deducing the laws of the under- 
standing from a questionable division of logical propositions ? 
Why distinguish Reason {Vernunft) from Understanding (Ver- 
stand), simply on the ground that the former is conversant about, 
or rather tends towards, the unconditioned ; when it is sufficiently 
apparent, that the unconditioned is conceived only as the negation 
of the conditioned, and also that the conception of contradictories 
is one ? In the Kantian philosophy both faculties perform the 
same function, both seek the one in the many ; — the Idea {Idee) 
is only the Concept (Begriff) sublimated into the inconceivable ; 



KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 17 

Reason only the Understanding which has " overleaped itself." 
Kant has clearly shown, that the idea of the unconditioned can 
have no objective reality, — that it conveys no knowledge, — and 
that it involves the most insoluble contradictions. But he ought 
to have shown that the unconditioned had no objective application, 
because it had, in fact, no subjective affirmation, — that it afforded 
no real knowledge, because it contained nothing even conceiv- 
able, — and that it is self-contradictory, because it is not a notion, 
either simple or positive, but only a fasciculus of negations — 
negations of the conditioned in its opposite extremes, and bound 
together merely by the aid of language and their common cha- 
racter of incomprehensibility. And while he appropriated Reason 
as a specific faculty to take cognisance of these negations, hypos- 
tatised as positive, under the Platonic name of Ideas ; so also, as 
a pendant to his deduction of the categories of Understanding 
from a logical division of propositions, he deduced the classifica- 
tion and number of these ideas of Reason from a logical division 
of syllogisms. — Kant thus stands intermediate between those who 
view the notion of the absolute as the instinctive affirmation of an 
encentric intuition, and those who regard it as the factitious nega- 
tive of an eccentric generalisation. 

Were we to adopt from the Critical Philosophy the idea of 
analysing thought into its fundamental conditions, and were we 
to carry the reduction of Kant to what we think its ultimate sim- 
plicity, we would discriminate thought into positive and negative, 
according as it is conversant about the conditioned or uncondi- 
tioned. This, however, would constitute a logical, not a psycho- 
logical distinction ; as positive and negative in thought are known 
at once, and by the same intellectual act. The twelve Categories 
of the Understanding would be thus included under the former ; 
the three Ideas of Reason under the latter ; and to this intent the 
contrast between understanding and reason would disappear. 
Finally, rejecting the arbitrary limitation of time and space to 
the sphere of sense, we would express under the formula of — The 
Conditioned in Time and Space — a definition of the conceivable, 
and an enumeration of the three categories of thought.* 

The imperfection and partiality of Kant's analysis are betrayed 
in its consequences. His doctrine leads to absolute scepticism. 

* [See Appendix I., for a more matured view of these categories or con- 
ditions of thought.] 



18 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

Speculative reason, on Kant's own admission, is an organ of mere 
delusion. The idea of the unconditioned, about which it is con- 
versant, is shown to involve insoluble contradictions, and yet to 
be the legitimate product of intelligence. Hume has well observed, 
" that it matters not whether we possess a false reason, or no 
reason at all." If " the light that leads astray, be light from 
heaven," what are we to believe? If our intellectual nature be 
perfidious in one revelation, it must be presumed deceitful in all ; 
nor is it possible for Kant to establish the existence of God, Free- 
will, and Immortality, on the presumed veracity of reason, in a 
practical relation, after having himself demonstrated its mendacity 
in a speculative. 

Kant had annihilated the older metaphysic, but the germ of a 
more visionary doctrine of the absolute, than any of those refuted, 
was contained in the bosom of his own philosophy. He had slain 
the body, but had not exorcised the spectre of the absolute ; and 
this spectre has continued to haunt the schools of Germany even 
to the present day. The philosophers were not content to aban- 
don their metaphysic ; to limit philosophy to an observation of 
phenomena, and to the generalisation of these phenomena into 
laws. The theories of Bouterweck, (in his earlier works,) of 
Bardili, of Reinhold, of Fichte, of Schelling, of Hegel, and of 
sundry others, are just so many endeavours, of greater or of less 
ability, to fix the absolute as a positive in knowledge ; but the 
absolute, like the water in the sieves of the Danaides, has always 
hitherto run through as a negative into the abyss of nothing. 

3. Of these theories, that of Schelling is the only one in 
regard to which it is now necessary to say any thing. His opinion 
constitutes the third of those enumerated touching the knowledge 
of the absolute ; and the following is a brief statement of its prin- 
cipal positions : — 

While the lower sciences are of the relative and conditioned, 
PJiilosophy, as the science of sciences, must be of the absolute — 
the unconditioned. Philosophy, therefore, supposes a science of 
.the absolute. Is the absolute beyond our knowledge ? — then is 
philosophy itself impossible. 

But howj it is objected, can the absolute be known ? The ab- 
solute, as unconditioned, identical, and one, cannot be cognised 
under conditions, by difference and plurality. It cannot, there- 
fore, be known, if the subject of knowledge be distinguished from 
the object of knowledge ; in a knowledge of the absolute, exist- 



SCHELLING'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 19 

ence and knowledge must be identical ; the absolute can only be 
known, if adequately known, and it can only be adequately known, 
by the absolute itself. But is this possible? We are wholly 
ignorant of existence in itself: — the mind knows nothing, except 
in parts, by quality, and difference, and relation ; consciousness 
supposes the subject contradistinguished from the object of thought ; 
the abstraction of this contrast is a negation of consciousness ; and 
the negation of consciousness is the annihilation of thought itself. 
The alternative is therefore unavoidable : — either finding the abso- 
lute, we lose ourselves ; or retaining self and individual conscious- 
ness, we do not reach the absolute. 

All this Schelling frankly admits. He admits that a knowledge 
of the absolute is impossible, in personality and consciousness : he 
admits that, as the understanding knows, and can know, only by 
consciousness, and consciousness only by difference, we, as con- 
scious and understanding, can apprehend, can conceive only the 
conditioned ; and he admits that, only if man be himself the in- 
finite, can the infinite be known by him : 

" NTec sentire Deuin, nisi qui pars ipse Deoram est ; " * 
("None can feel God, who shares not in the Godhead.") 

* [This line is from Manilius. But as a statement of Schelling's doctrine 
it is inadequate ; for on his doctrine the deity can be known only if fully 
known, and a full knowledge of deity is possible only to the absolute deity — 
that is, not to a sharer in the Godhead. Manilius has likewise another (poeti- 
cally) laudable line, of a similar, though less exceptionable, purport : — 
" Exemplumque Dei quisque est in imagine parva ; " 

("Each is himself a miniature of God.") 
For we should not recoil to the opposite extreme ; and, though man be not 
identical with the Deity, still is he " created in the image of God." It is, in- 
deed, only through an analogy of the human with the Divine nature, that 
we are percipient and recipient of Divinity. As St Prosper has it : — " Nemo 
possidet Deum, nisi qui possidetur a Deo." — So Seneca : — " In unoquoque 
virorum bonorum habitatDcus." — So Plotinus •• — " Virtue tending to consum- 
mation, and irradicated in the soul by moral wisdom, reveals a God ; but a 
God destitute of true virtue is an empty name." — So Jacobi: — " From the 
enjoyment of virtue springs the idea of a virtuous ; from the enjoyment of free- 
dom, the idea of a free ; from the enjoyment of life, the idea of a living ; from 
the enjoyment of the divine, the idea of a godlike — and of a God." — So 
Goethe : — 

" Waer nicht das Auge sounenhaft, 

Wie koennten wir das Licht erblicken ? 

Lebt' nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, 

Wie koennte uns das Goettliches entzuecken ? " 
So Kant and many others. (Thus morality and religion, necessity and 



20 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

But Schclling contends that there is a capacity of knowledge 
above consciousness, and higher than the understanding, and that 
this knowledge is competent to human reason, as identical with 
the Absolute itself. In this act of knowledge, which, after Fichte, 
he calls the Intellectual Intuition, there exists no distinction of 
subject and object, — no contrast of knowledge and existence ; all 
difference is lost in absolute indifference, — all plurality in absolute 
unity. The Intuition itself, — Reason, — and the Absolute are 
identified. The absolute exists only as known by reason, and 
reason knows only as being itself the absolute. 

This act (act!) is necessarily ineffable : 

" The vision and the faculty divine," 
to be known, must be experienced. It cannot be conceived by the 
understanding, because beyond its sphere ; it cannot be described, 
because its essence is identity, and all description supposes discri- 
mination. To those who arc unable to rise beyond a philosophy 
of reflection, Schelling candidly allows that the doctrine of the 
absolute can appear only a series of contradictions ; and he has at 
least the negative merit of having clearly exposed the impossibi- 
lity of a philosophy of the unconditioned, as founded on a know- 
ledge by difference, if he utterly fails in positively proving the 
possibility of such a philosophy, as founded on a knowledge in 
identity, through an absorption into, and vision of, the absolute. 

Out of Laputa or the Empire it would be idle to enter into an 
articulate refutation of a theory, which founds philosophy on the 
annihilation of consciousness, and on the identification of the un- 
conscious philosopher with God. The intuition of the absolute is 
manifestly the .work of an arbitrary abstraction, and of a self- 
delusive imagination. To reach the point of indifference, — by 
abstraction we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we annihi- 
late the subject, of consciousness. But what remains? — Nothing. 
" Nil conscimus nobis." We then hypostatise the zero; we bap- 
tize it with the name of Absolute ; and conceit ourselves that we 

atheism, rationally go together.) — The Platonists and Fathers have indeed 
finely said, that " God is the soul of the soul, as the soul is the soul of the 
body." 

" Vita Animse Deus est; haec Corporis. Hac fugiente, 
Solvitur hoc ; perit hgec, destituente Deo." 
These verses are preserved to us from an ancient poet by John of Salis- 
bury, and they denote the comparison of which Buchanan has made so admi- 
rable a use in his Calvini Epicedium.~\ 



SCHELLING'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 21 

contemplate absolute existence, when we only speculate absolute 
privation.* This truth has been indeed virtually confessed by the 
two most distinguished followers of Schelling. Hegel at last 
abandons the intuition, and regards "pure or undetermined exis- 
tence" as convertible with "pure nothing;" whilst Oken, if he 
adhere to the intuition, intrepidly identifies the Deity or Absolute 
with zero. God, he makes the Nothing, the Nothing, he makes God ; 

" And Naught, 
Is ev'rything, and ev'rything is Naught." f 

Nor does the negative chimsera prove less fruitful than the posi- 
tive ; for Schelling has found it as difficult to evolve the one into 
the many, as his disciples to deduce the universe and its contents 
from the first self-affirmation of the " primordial Nothing." 
"Miri homines ! Nihil esse aliquid statuantve negentve ; 
Quodque negant statuunt, quod statunntque negant." 

To Schelling, indeed, it has been impossible, without gratuitous 

* [The Infinite and Absolute are only the names of two counter imbecilli- 
ties of the human mind, transmuted into properties of the nature of things,— of 
two subjective negations, converted into objective affirmations. We tire our- 
selves, either in adding to, or in taking from. Some, more reasonably, call the 
thing unfinishable — infinite ; others, less rationally, call it finished — absolute. 
But in both cases, the metastasis is in itself irrational. Not, however, in the 
highest degree: for the subjective contradictories were not at first objectified 
by the same philosophers ; and it is the crowning irrationality of the Infinito- 
absolutists, that they have not merely accepted as objective what is only sub- 
jective, but quietly assumed as the same, what are not only different but con- 
flictive. not only conflictive, but repugnant. Seneca (Ep. 118) has given the 
true genealogy of the original fictions ; but at his time the consummative union 
of the two had not been attempted. "Ubi animus aliquid diu protulit, et 
magnitudinem ejus sequendo lassatus est, infinitum coepit vocari. Eodem 
modo, aliquid diificulter secari cogitavimus, novissime, crescente difficultate, 
insecubile inventum est."] 

f [From the Rejected Addresses. Their ingenious authors have embodied 
a jest in the very words by which Oken, in sober seriousness, propounds the 
first and greatest of philosophical truths. Jacobi for Neeb ?) might well 
say, that, in reading this last consummation of German speculation, he did 
not know whether he were standing on his head or his feet. The book in 
which Oken so ingeniously deduces the All from the Nothing, has, I see, been 
lately translated into English, and published by the Kay Society (I think). 
The statement of the paradox is, indeed, somewhat softened in the second 
edition, from which, I presume, the version is made. Not that Oken and 
Hegel are original even in the absurdity. For as Varro right truly said : — 
" Nihil tarn absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum ; " 
so the Intuition of God = the Absolute, = the Nothing, we find asserted by 
the lower Platonists, by the Buddhists, and by Jacob Boehme.] 



22 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

and even contradictory assumptions, to explain the deduction of 
the finite from the infinite. By no salto mortale has he been able 
to clear the magic circle in which he had enclosed himself. Unable 
to connect the unconditioned and the conditioned by any natural 
correlation, he has variously attempted to account for the phe- 
nomenon of the universe, either by imposing a necessity of self- 
manifestation on the absolute, *. e. by conditioning the uncon- 
ditioned ; or by postulating a fall of the finite from the infinite, 
i. e. by begging the very fact which his hypothesis professed its 
exclusive ability to explain. — The veil of Isis is thus still unwith- 
drawn ; * and the question proposed by Orpheus at the dawn of 
speculation will probably remain unanswered at its setting : — 

11 Ylug "hi pot 1'j rt toc ttxvt 'iarcct xxl %&>gis eKctarop] " 
(" How can I think each, separate, and all, one?") 

In like manner, annihilating consciousness in order to recon- 
struct it, Schelling has never yet been able to connect the faculties 
conversant about the conditioned, with the faculty of absolute 
knowledge. One simple objection strikes us as decisive, although 
we do not remember to have seen it alleged. " We awaken," 
says Schelling, " from the Intellectual Intuition as from a state of 
death ; we awaken by Reflection, that is, through a compulsory 
return to ourselves." f We cannot, at the same moment, be in 
the intellectual intuition and in common consciousness ; we must 
therefore be able to connect them by an act of memory — of recol- 
lection. But how can there be a remembrance of the absolute 
and its intuition ? As out of time, and space, and relation, and 
difference, it is admitted that the absolute cannot be construed to 
the understanding ? But as remembrance is only possible under 
the conditions of the understanding, it is consequently impossible 
to remember anything anterior to the moment when we awaken 
into consciousness ; and the clairvoyance of the absolute, even 
granting its reality, is thus, after the crisis, as if it had never 
been. We defy all solution of this objection. 

* [Isis appears as the iEgypto- Grecian symbol of the Unconditioned. 
(Jlatg — \oioc — Ovaicc: "laeiou, — yvaai; zov ovrog. Plut. I. et O.) In the 
temple of Athene-Isis, at Sais, on the fane there stood this sublime inscrip- 
tion: 

I AM ALL THAT WAS, AND IS, AND SHALL BE ; 

NOR MY VEIL, HAS IT BEEN WITHDRAWN BY MORTAL. 

( u 'Ey&> eiftt ttocu to yeyovog, xxl ov, koc\ ivo/uei/ov, x.a.1 rou ipov 7re7rhov ovtietg ttu 

f In Fichte's u. Niethhammcr's Phil. Jonrn. vol. iii. p. 211. 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED 23 

4. What has now been stated may in some degree enable the 
reader to apprehend the relations in which our author stands, 
both to those who deny and to those who admit a knowledge of 
the absolute. If we compare the philosophy of Cousin with the 
philosophy of Schelling, we at once perceive that the former is a 
disciple, though by no means a servile disciple of the latter. The 
scholar, though enamoured with his master's system as a whole, 
is sufficiently aware of the two insuperable difficulties of that 
theory. He saw, that if he pitched the absolute so high, it was 
impossible to deduce from it the relative ; and he felt, probably, 
that the Intellectual Intuition — a stumbling-block to himself — 
would be arrant foolishness in the eyes of his countrymen. — 
Cousin and Schelling agree, that as philosophy is the science of 
the unconditioned, the unconditioned must be within the compass 
of science. They agree that the unconditioned is known, and 
immediately known : and they agree that intelligence, as com- 
petent to the unconditioned, is impersonal, infinite, divine. — But 
while they coincide in the fact of the absolute, as known, they are 
diametrically opposed as to the mode in which they attempt to 
realize this knowledge ; each regarding, as the climax of contra- 
diction, the manner in which the other endeavours to bring human 
reason and the absolute into proportion. According to Schelling, 
Cousin's absolute is only a relative ; according to Cousin, Schel- 
ling's knowledge of the absolute is a negation of thought itself. 
Cousin declares the condition of all knowledge to be plurality and 
difference ; and Schelling, that the condition, under which alone 
a knowledge of the absolute becomes possible, is indifference and 
unity. The one thus denies a notion of the absolute to conscious- 
ness ; whilst the other affirms that consciousness is implied in 
every act of intelligence. Truly, we must view each as triumphant 
over the other ; and the result of this mutual neutralisation is, — 
that the absolute, of which both assert a knowledge, is for us 
incognisable.* 

* [" Quod genus hoc pugnag, qua victor victus uterque ! " 
is still further exhibited in the mutual refutation of the two great apostles 
of the Absolute, in Germany, — Schelling and Hegel. They were early 
friends, — contemporaries at the same university, — occupiers of the same 
bursal room, (college chums,) — Hegel, somewhat the elder man, was some- 
what the younger philosopher, — and they were joint editors of the journal in 
which their then common doctrine was at first promulgated. So far all was 
in unison ; but now they separated, locally and in opinion. Both, indeed, 
stuck to the Absolute, but each regarded the way in which the other pro- 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

In these circumstances, we might expect our author to have 
stated the difficulties to which his theory was exposed on the one 
side and on the other ; and to have endeavoured to obviate the 
objections, both of his brother absolutists, and of those who alto- 
gether deny a philosophy of the unconditioned. This he has not 
done. The possibility of reducing the notion of the absolute to a 
negative conception is never once contemplated ; and if one or two 
allusions (not always, perhaps, correct) are made to his doctrine, 
the name of Schelling does not occur, as we recollect, in the whole 
compass of these lectures. Difficulties, by which either the doc- 
trine of the absolute in general, or his own particular modification 
of that doctrine, may be assailed, are either avoided, or solved 
only by still greater. Assertion is substituted for proof ; facts of 
consciousness are alleged, which consciousness never knew ; and 
paradoxes, that baffle argument, are promulgated as intuitive 
truths, above the necessity of confirmation. With every feeling 
of respect for M. Cousin as a man of learning and genius, we 
must regard the grounds on which he endeavours to establish his 
doctrine as assumptive, inconsequent, and erroneous. In vindicat- 
ing the truth of this statement, we shall attempt to show : — in the 
first place, that M. Cousin is at fault in all the authorities he 
quotes in favour of the opinion, that the absolute, infinite, uncon- 
ditioned, is a primitive notion, cognisable by our intellect ; in the 
second, that his argument to prove the correality of his three ideas 

fesseel to reach it, as absurd. Hegel derided the Intellectual Intuition of 
Schelling, as a poetical play of fancy ; Schelling derided the Dialectic of 
Hegel, as a logical play with words. Both, I conceive, were right ; but 
neither fully right. If Schelling's Intellectual Intuition were poetical, it was 
a poetry transcending, in fact abolishing, human imagination. If Hegel's 
Dialectic were logical, it was a logic, outraging that science and the condi- 
tions of thought itself. Hegel's whole philosophy is indeed founded on two 
errors ; — on a mistake in logic, and on a violation of logic. In his dream of 
disproving the law of Excluded Middle (between two Contradictories), he 
inconceivably mistakes Contraries for Contradictories ; and in positing pure 
or absolute existence as a meDtal datum, immediate, intuitive, and above 
proof, (though, in truth, this be palpably a mere relative gained by a process of 
abstraction,) he not only mistakes the fact, but violates the logical law which 
prohibits us to assume the principle which it behoves us to prove. On these 
two fundamental errors rests Hegel's dialectic ; and Hegel's dialectic is the 
ladder by which he attempts to scale the Absolute. — The peculiar doctrine 
of these two illustrious thinkers is thus to me only another manifestation of 
an occurrence of the commonest in human speculation ; it is only a sophism 
of relative self-love, victorious over the absolute love of truth; — " Quod 
volunt sapiunt, et nolunt sapere qua 3 vera sunt."] 



(COUSIN ON THE CATEGORIES OF ARISTOTLE AND KANT.) 25 

proves directly the reverse ; in the third, that the conditions 
under which alone he allows intelligence to be possible, neces- 
sarily exclude the possibility of a knowledge, not to say a con- 
ception, of the absolute; and in the fourth, that the absolute, as 
denned by him, is only a relative and a conditioned. 

In the first place, then, M. Cousin supposes that Aristotle and 
Kant, in their several categories, equally proposed an analysis of 
the constituent elements of intelligence; and he also supposes 
that each, like himself, recognised among these elements the 
notion of the infinite, absolute, unconditioned. In both these sup- 
positions we think him wrong. 

It is a serious error in a historian of philosophy to imagine 
that, in his scheme of categories, Aristotle proposed, like Kant, 
" an analysis of the elements of human reason." It is just, how- 
ever, to mention, that in this mistake M. Cousin has been pre- 
ceded by Kant himself. But the ends proposed by the two phi- 
losophers were different, even opposed. In their several tables : 
— Aristotle attempted a synthesis of things in their multiplicity, — 
a classification of objects real, but in relation to thought ; — Kant, 
an analysis of mind in its unity, — a dissection of thought, pure, 
but in relation to its objects. The predicaments of Aristotle are 
thus objective, of things as understood ; those of Kant subjective, 
of the mind as understanding. The former are results a poste- 
riori — the creations of abstraction and generalisation ; the latter, 
anticipations a priori — the conditions of those acts themselves. 
It is true, that as the one scheme exhibits the unity of thought 
diverging into plurality, in appliance to its objects, and the other, 
exhibits the multiplicity of these objects converging towards unity 
by a collective determination of the mind ; while, at the same time, 
language usually confounds the subjective and objective under a 
common term ; — it is certainly true, that some elements in the 
one table coincide in name with some elements in the other. 
This coincidence is, however, only equivocal. In reality, the 
whole Kantian categories must be excluded from the Aristotelic 
list, as entia rationis, as notiones secundce — in short, as determi- 
nations of thought, and not genera of real things ; while the 
several elements would be specially excluded, as partial, privative, 
transcendent, &c. But if it would be unjust to criticise the cate- 
gories of Kant in whole, or in part, by the Aristotelic canon, what 
must we think of Kant, who, after magnifying the idea of invest!- 



26 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

gating the forms of pure intellect as worthy of the mighty genius 
of the Stagirite, proceeds, on this false hypothesis, to blame the 
execution, as a kind of patcli work, as incomplete, as confounding 
derivative with simple notions ; nay, even, on the narrow prin- 
ciples of his own Critique, as mixing the forms of pure sense 
with the forms of pure understanding?* — If M. Cousin also were 
correct in his supposition that Aristotle and his followers had 
viewed his categories as an analysis of the fundamental forms of 
thought, he would find his own reduction of the elements of rea- 
son to a double principle anticipated in the scholastic division of 
existence into ens per se and ens per accidens. 

Nor is our author correct in thinking that the categories of 
Aristotle and Kant arc complete, inasmuch as they are co-exten- 
sive with his own. — As to the former, if the Infinite were not 
excluded, on what would rest the scholastic distinction of ens cate- 
goricum and ens transcendent ? The logicians require that pre- 
(licamental matter shall be of a limited and finite nature ;| God, 
as infinite, is thus excluded : and while it is evident from the 
whole context of his book of categories, that Aristotle there only 
contemplated a distribution of the finite, so, in other of his works, 
he more than once emphatically denies the infinite as an object 

not Only of knowledge, but of thought; — to oLkuqov otyvuaTOv fi ct7ret%ov 

— to xTrnpou rJvrs votrou, ovn ui<j6'/jt(jv . j — But if Aristotle th us re- 
gards the Infinite as beyond the compass of thought, Kant views 
it as, at least, beyond the sphere of knowledge. If M. Cousin 
indeed employed the term category in relation to the Kantian 
philosophy in the Kantian acceptation, he would be as erroneous 
in regard to Kant as he is in regard to Aristotle ; but we presume 
that he wishes, under that term, to include not only the " Cate- 

* See the Critik d. r. V. and the Prolegomena. 

t [M. Peisse, in a note here, quotes the common logical law of categorical 
entities, well and briefly expressed in the following verse : — 

" Entia per sese, finita, realia, tota." 
He likewise justly notices, that nothing is included in the Aristotelic categories 
but what is susceptible of definition, consequently of analysis] 

% Phys. L. iii. c. 10, text. 66, c. 7, text. 40. See also Metaph. L. ii. c. 2, 
text. 11. Analyt. Post. L. i. c. 20, text. 39 — et alibi. — [Aristotle's defini- 
tion of the Infinite, (of the olnei^ov in contrast to the doQtarou) — " that of which 
there is always something beyond,' 1 ' 1 may be said to be a definition only of the 
Indefinite. This I shall not gainsay. But it was the only Infinite which 
he contemplated ; as it is the only Infinite of which we can form a notion.] 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 27 

gories of Understanding," but the " Ideas of Reason."* But 
Kant limits knowledge to experience, and experience to the cate- 
gories of the understanding, which, in reality, are only so many 
forms of the conditioned; and allows to the notion of the uncon- 
ditioned (corresponding to the ideas of reason) no objective 
reality, regarding it merely as a regulative principle in the 
arrangement of our thoughts. — As M. Cousin, however, holds that 
the unconditioned is not only subjectively conceived, but objectively 
known ; he is thus totally wrong in regard to the one philosopher, 
and wrong in part in relation to the other. 

In the second place, our author maintains that the idea of the 
infinite, or absolute, and the idea of the finite, or relative, are 
equally real, because the notion of the one necessarily suggests 
the notion of the other. 

Correlatives certainly suggest each other, but correlatives may, 
or may not, be equally real and positive. In thought contradictories 
necessarily imply each other, for the knowledge of contradictories 
is one. But the reality of one contradictory, so far from guaran- 
teeing the reality of the other, is nothing else than its negation. 
Thus every positive notion (the concept of a thing by what it is) 
suggests a negative notion (the concept of a thing by what it is not) ; 
and the highest positive notion, the notion of the conceivable, is 
not without its corresponding negative in the notion of the incon- 
ceivable. But though these mutually suggest each other, the 
positive alone is real; the negative is only an abstraction of 
the other, and in the highest generality, even an abstraction 
of thought itself. It therefore behoved M. Cousin, instead 
of assuming the objective correality of his two elements on 
the fact of their subjective correlation, to have suspected, on this 
very ground, that the reality of the one was inconsistent with the 
reality of the other. In truth, upon examination, it will be found 
that his two primitive ideas are nothing more than contradictory 



* [" The Categories of Kant are simple forms or frames (schemata) of the 
Understanding (Ver stand) under which, an object to be known, must be 
necessarily thought. — Kant's Ideas, a word which he expressly borrowed 
from Plato, are concepts of the Reason (Vernunft) ; whose objects tranr 
scending the sphere of all experience actual or possible, consequently do not 
fall under the categories, in other words, are positively unknowable. These 
ideas are God, Matter, Soul, objects which, considered out of relation, or in 
their transcendent reality, are so many phases of the Absolute." — M. Peisse.] 



28 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

relatives. These, consequently, of their very nature, imply each 
other in thought ; but they imply each other only as affirmation 
and negation of the same. 

We have already shown, that though the Conditioned (condi- 
tionally limited) be one, what is opposed to it as the Unconditioned, 
is plural : that the unconditional negation of limitation gives one 
unconditioned, the Infinite ; as the unconditional affirmation of limi- 
tation affords another, the Absolute. This, while it coincides with 
the opinion, that the Unconditioned in either pliasis is inconceivable, 
is repugnant to the doctrine, that the unconditioned (absoluto-in- 
finite) can be positively construed to the mind. For those who, 
with M. Cousin, regard the notion of the unconditioned as a posi- 
tive and real knowledge of existence in its all-comprehensive 
unity, and who consequently employ the terms Absolute, Infinite, 
Unconditioned, as only various expressions for the same identity, 
are imperatively bound to prove that their idea of the One corres- 
ponds — cither with that Unconditioned ice have distinguished as 
the Absolute, — or with that Unconditioned we have distinguished as 
the Infinite, — or that it includes both, — or that it excludes both. 
This they have not done, and, we suspect, have never attempted 
to do. 

Our author maintains, that the unconditioned is known under 
the laws of consciousness ; and does not, like Schelling, pretend 
to an intuition of existence beyond the bounds of space and time. 
Indeed, he himself expressly predicates the absolute and infinite 
of these forms. 

Time is only the image or the concept of a certain correlation 
of existences — of existence, therefore, pro tanto, as conditioned. It 
is thus itself only a form of the conditioned. But let that pass. — Is, 
then, the Absolute conceivable of time ? Can we conceive time as 
unconditionally limited? We can easily represent to ourselves 
time under any relative limitation of commencement and termina- 
tion ; but we are conscious to ourselves of nothing more clearly, 
than that it would be equally possible to think without thought, as 
to construe to the mind an absolute commencement, or an absolute 
termination, of time ; that is, a beginning and an end, beyond 
which, time is conceived as non-existent. Goad imagination to 
the utmost, it still sinks paralysed within the bounds of time ; and 
time survives as the condition of the thought itself in which we 
annihilate the universe : 

11 Sur les mondes detruits le Temps dort immobile." 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 29 

But if the Absolute be inconceivable of this form, is the Infinite 
more comprehensible ? Can we imagine time as unconditionally 
unlimited ? — We cannot conceive the infinite regress of time ; for 
such a notion could only be realized by the infinite addition in 
thought of finite times, and such an addition would, itself, require 
an eternity for its accomplishment. If we dream of effecting this, 
we only deceive ourselves by substituting the indefinite for the in- 
finite, than which no two notions can be more opposed. The 
negation of the commencement of time involves likewise the affir- 
mation, that an infinite time has at every moment already run ; 
that is, it implies the contradiction, that an infinite has been com- 
pleted. — For the same reasons we are unable to conceive an infi- 
nite progress of time ; while the infinite regress and the infinite 
progress, taken together, involve the triple contradiction of an 
infinite concluded, of an infinite commencing, and of two infinites, 
not exclusive of each other. 

Space, like time, is only the intuition or the concept of a cer- 
tain correlation of existence — of existence, therefore, pro tanto, 
as conditioned. It is thus itself only a form of the conditioned. 
But apart from this, thought is equally powerless in realizing a 
notion either of the absolute totality, or of the infinite immensity, of 
space. — And while time and space, as wholes, can thus neither be 
conceived as absolutely limited, nor as infinitely unlimited ; so their 
parts can be represented to the mind neither as absolutely indivi- 
dual, nor as divisible to infinity. The universe cannot be imagined 
as a whole, which may not also be imagined as a part ; nor an 
atom be imagined as a part, which may not also be imagined as a 
whole. 

The same analysis, with a similar result, can be applied to 
cause and effect, and to substance and phenomenon. These, 
however, may both be reduced to the law itself of the conditioned.* 

The Conditioned is, therefore, that only which can be positively 
conceived ; the Absolute and Infinite are conceived only as nega- 
tions of the conditioned in its opposite poles. 

Now, as we observed, M. Cousin, and those who confound the 
absolute and infinite, and regard the Unconditioned as a positive 
and indivisible notion, must show that this notion coincides either, 
1°, with the notion of the Absolute, to the exclusion of the in- 
finite ; or 2°, with the notion of the Infinite, to the exclusion 

* See Appendix I. for the applications of that doctrine. 



30 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

of the absolute ; or 3°, that it includes both as true, carrying 
them up to indifference ; or 4°, that it excludes both as false. 
The last two alternatives are impossible, as either would be 
subversive of the highest principle of intelligence, wbieh asserts, 
that of two contradictories, both cannot, but one must, be true. 
It only, therefore, remains to identify the unity of the Uncondi- 
tioned with the Infinite, or with the Absolute — with either, to the 
exclusion of the other. But while every one must be intimately 
conscious of the impossibility of this, the very fact that our author 
and other philosophers a priori have constantly found it necessary 
to confound these contradictions, sufficiently proves that neither 
term has a right to represent the unity of the unconditioned, to 
the prejudice of the other. 

The Unconditioned is, therefore, not a positive concept ; nor 
has it even a real or intrinsic unity ; for it only combines the 
Absolute and the Infinite, in themselves contradictory of each 
other, into a unity relative to us by the negative bond of their 
inconceivability. It is on this mistake of the relative for the irre- 
spective, of the negative for the positive, that M. Cousin's theory 
is founded : And it is not difficult to understand how the mistake 
originated. 

This reduction of M. Cousin's two ideas of the Infinite and 
Finite to one positive conception and its negative, implicitly anni- 
hilates also the third idea, devised by him as a connection between 
his two substantive ideas ; and which he marvellously identifies 
with the relation of cause and effect. 

Yet before leaving this part of our subject, we may observe, 
that the very simplicity of our analysis is a strong presumption 
in favour of its truth. A plurality of causes is not to be postu- 
lated, where one is sufficient to account for the phenomena (Entia 
non sunt midtiplicanda prceter necessitatem) : and M. Cousin, in 
supposing three positive ideas, where only one is necessary, brings 
the rule of parsimony against his hypothesis, even before its 
unsoundness may be definitely brought to light. 

In the third place, the restrictions to which our author subjects 
intelligence, divine and human, implicitly deny a knowledge — 
even a concept — of the absolute, both to God and man. — " The 
condition of intelligence," says M. Cousin, " is difference; and an 
act of knowledge is only possible where there exists a plurality 
of terms. Unity does not suffice for conception ; variety is neces- 
sary ; nay more, not only is variety necessary, there must like- 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED, 31 

wise subsist an intimate relation between the principles of unity 
and variety ; without which, the variety not being perceived by 
the unity, the one is as if it could not perceive, and the other as 
if it could not be perceived. Look back for a moment into your- 
selves, and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our 
feeble consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of 
which the one perceives the other, of which the other is perceived 
by the first : in this consists self-knowledge, — in this consists self- 
comprehension, — in this consists intelligence : intelligence without 
consciousness is the abstract possibility of intelligence, not intelli- 
gence in the act ; and consciousness implies diversity and differ- 
ence. Transfer all this from human to absolute intelligence ; — that 
is to say, refer the ideas to the only intelligence to which they 
can belong. You have thus, if I may so express myself, the life 
of absolute intelligence ; you have this intelligence with the com- 
plete development of the elements which are necessary for it to 
be a true intelligence ; you have all the momenta whose relation 
and motion constitute the reality of knowledge." — In all this, so 
far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree ; for a 
more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a 
knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for 
man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a 
knowledge, even in the Deity, without contradicting our human 
conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself. Our author, 
however, recognises no contradiction ; and, without argument or 
explanation, accords a knowledge of that which can only be known 
under the negation of all difference and plurality, to that which 
can only know under the affirmation of both. 

If a knowledge of the absolute were possible under these con- 
ditions, it may excite our wonder that other philosophers should 
have viewed this supposition as utterly impossible ; and that 
Schelling, whose acuteness was never questioned, should have 
exposed himself gratuitously to the reproach of mysticism, by his 
postulating for a few, and through a faculty above the reach of 
consciousness, a knowledge already given to all in the fact of con- 
sciousness itself. Monstrous as is the postulate of the Intellectual 
Intuition, we freely confess that it is only through such a faculty 
that we can imagine the possibility of a science of the absolute ; 
and have no hesitation in acknowledging, that if Schelling's hypo- 
thesis appear to us incogitable, that of Cousin is seen to be self- 
contradictory. 



32 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

Our author admits, and must admit, that the Absolute, as abso- 
lutely universal, is absolutely one; absolute unity is convertible 
with the absolute negation of plurality and difference ; the abso- 
lute, and the knowledge of the absolute, are therefore identical. 
But knowledge, or intelligence, it is asserted by M. Cousin, sup- 
poses a plurality of terms — the plurality of subject and object. 
Intelligence, whose essence is plurality, cannot therefore be iden- 
tified with the absolute, whose essence is unity ; and if known, 
the absolute, as known, must be different from the absolute, as 
existing ; that is, there must be two absolutes — an absolute in 
knowledge, and an absolute in existence, which is contradictory. 

But waiving this contradiction, and allowing the non-identity 
of knowledge and existence, the absolute as known must be known 
under the conditions of the absolute as existing, that is, as abso- 
lute unity. But, on the other hand, it is asserted, that the con- 
dition of intelligence, as knowing, is plurality and difference ; 
consequently the condition of the absolute, as existing, and under 
which it must be known, and the condition of intelligence, as 
capable of knowing, arc incompatible. For, if we suppose the 
absolute cognisable : it must be identified either, — 1°, with the 
subject knowing ; or, 2°, with the object known ; or, 3°, with the 
indifference of both. The first hypothesis, and the second, are 
contradictory of the absolute. For in these the absolute is sup- 
posed to be known, either as contradistinguished from the knowing 
subject, or as contradistinguished from the object known ; in other 
words, the absolute is asserted to be known as absolute unity, 
i. e. as the negation of all plurality, while the very act by which 
it is known, affirms plurality as the condition of its own possibility. 
The third hypothesis, on the other hand, is contradictory of the 
plurality of intelligence ; for if the subject and the object of con- 
sciousness be known as one, a plurality of terms is not the 
necessary condition of intelligence. The alternative is therefore 
necessary : — Either the absolute cannot be known or conceived at 
all ; or our author is wrong in subjecting thought to the condi- 
tions of plurality and difference. It was the iron necessity of the 
alternative that constrained Schelling to resort to the hypothesis 
of a knowledge in identity through the intellectual intuition : and 
it could only be from an oversight of the main difficulties of the 
problem that M. Cousin, in abandoning the intellectual intuition, 
did not abandon the absolute itself. For how that, whose essence 
is all-comprehensive unity, can be known by the negation of that 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 33 

unity under the condition of plurality ; — how that, which exists 
only as the identity of all difference, can be known under the 
negation of that identity, in the antithesis of subject and object, 
of knowledge and existence : — these are contradictions which M. 
Cousin has not attempted to solve, — contradictions which he does 
not seem to have contemplated. 

In the fourth place. — The objection of the inconceivable nature 
of Schelling's intellectual intuition, and of a knowledge of the 
absolute in identity, apparently determined our author to adopt 
the opposite, but suicidal, alternative, — of a knowledge of the 
absolute in consciousness, and by difference. — The equally insu- 
perable objection, — that from the absolute denned as absolute, 
Schelling had not been able, without inconsequence, to deduce 
the conditioned, seems, in like manner, to have influenced M. 
Cousin to define the absolute by a relative ; not observant, it 
would appear, that though he thus facilitated the derivation of 
the conditioned, he annihilated in reality the absolute itself. — By 
the former proceeding, our author virtually denies the possibility 
of the absolute in thought ; by the latter, the possibility of the 
absolute in existence. 

The absolute is defined by our author, " an absolute cause, — a 
cause which cannot but pass into act" — Now, it is sufficiently 
manifest that a thing existing absolutely (i. e. not under relation), 
and a thing existing absolutely as a cause, are contradictory. 
The former is the absolute negation of ail relation, the latter is 
the absolute affirmation of a particular relation. A cause is a 
relative, and what exists absolutely as a cause, exists absolutely 
under relation. Schelling has justly observed, that " he would 
deviate wide as the poles from the idea of the absolute, who would 
think of defining its nature by the notion of activity." * But he 
who would define the absolute by the notion of a cause, would 
deviate still more widely from its nature ; inasmuch as the notion 
of a cause involves not only the notion of a determination to 
activity, but of a determination to a particular, nay a dependent, 
kind of activity, — an activity not immanent, but transeunt. What 
exists merely as a cause, exists merely for the sake of something 
else, — is not final in itself, but simply a mean towards an end ; 
and in the accomplishment of that end, it consummates its own 

* Bruno, p. 171. 
c 



34 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

perfection. Abstractly considered, the effect is therefore superior 
to the cause. A cause, as cause, may indeed be better than one 
or two or any given number of its effects. But the total comple- 
ment of the effects of what exists only as a cause, is better than 
that which, ex hypothesi, exists merely for the sake of their 
production. — Further, not only is an absolute cause dependent 
on the effect for its perfection, — it is dependent on it even for 
its reality. For to what extent a thing exists necessarily as a 
cause, to that extent it is not all-sufficient to itself ; since to that 
extent it is dependent on the effect, as on the condition through 
which alone it realises its existence ; and what exists absolutely 
as a cause, exists therefore in absolute dependence on the effect 
for the reality of its existence. An absolute cause, in truth, only 
exists in its effects: it never is, it always becomes; for it is 
an existence in potentia, and not an existence in actu, except 
through and in its effects. The absolute is thus, at best, a being 
merely inchoative and imperfect. 

The definition of the absolute by absolute cause is, therefore, 
tantamount to a negation of itself; for it defines by relation and 
conditions, that which is conceived only as exclusive of both. 
The same is true of the definition of the absolute by substance. 
But of this we do not now speak. 

The vice of M. Cousin's definition of the absolute by absolute 
cause, is manifested likewise in its applications. He maintains 
that his theory can alone explain the nature and relations of the 
Deity ; and on its absolute incompetency to fulfil the conditions 
of a rational theism, we are willing to rest our demonstration of 
its radical unsoundness. 

" God," says our author, " creates ; he creates in virtue of his 
creative power, and he draws the universe, not from nonentity, 
but from himself, who is absolute existence. His distinguishing 
characteristic being an absolute creative force, which cannot but 
pass into activity, it follows, not that the creation is possible, but 
that it is necessary." 

We must be very brief. — The subjection of the Deity to a 
necessity — a necessity of self-manifestation identical with the 
creation of the universe, is contradictory of the fundamental pos- 
tulates of a divine nature. On this theory, God is not distinct 
from the world ; the creature is a modification of the creator. 
Now, without objecting that the simple subordination of the Deity 



COUSIN'S SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 35 

to necessity, is in itself tantamount to his dethronement, let us see 
to what consequences this necessity, on the hypothesis of M. 
Cousin, inevitably leads. On this hypothesis, one of two alterna- 
tives must be admitted. God, as necessarily determined to pass 
from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to pass 
either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the better. 
A third possibility, that both states are equal, as contradictory in 
itself, and as contradicted by our author, it is not necessary to 
consider. 

The first supposition must be rejected. The necessity in this 
case determines God to pass from the better to the worse ; that 
is, operates to his partial annihilation. The powejr which compels 
this must be external and hostile, for nothing operates willingly to 
its own deterioration ; and, as superior to the pretended God, is 
either itself the real deity, if an intelligent and free cause, or a 
negation of all deity, if a blind force or fate. 

The second is equally inadmissible : — that God, passing into the 
universe, passes from a state of comparative imperfection, into 
a state of comparative perfection. The divine nature is identical 
with the most perfect nature, and is also identical with the first 
cause. If the first cause be not identical with the most perfect 
nature, there is no God, for the two essential conditions of his ex- 
istence are not in combination. Now, on the present supposition, 
the most perfect nature is the derived ; nay the universe, the cre- 
ation, the yivof&svov, is, in relation to its cause, the real, the actual, 
the o'rraj fa. It would also be the divine, but that divinity sup- 
poses also the notion of cause, while the universe, ex hypothesi, is 
only an effect. 

It is no answer to these difficulties for M. Cousin to say, that 
the Deity, though a cause which cannot choose but create, is not 
however exhausted in the act ; and though passing with all the 
elements of his being into the universe, that he remains entire in his 
essence, and with all the superiority of the cause over the effect. 
The dilemma is unavoidable : — Either the Deity is independent of 
the universe for his being or perfection ; on which alternative our 
author must abandon his theory of God, and the necessity of crea- 
tion : Or the Deity is dependent on his manifestation in the uni- 
verse for his being or perfection ; on which alternative, his doc- 
trine is assailed by the difficulties previously stated. 

The length to which the preceding observations have extended, 



36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

prevents us from adverting to sundry other opinions of our author, 
which we conceive to be equally unfounded. —For example, (to say 
nothing of his proof of the impersonality of intelligence, because, 
forsooth, truth is not subject to our will), what can be conceived 
more self-contradictory than his theory of moral liberty f Divor- 
cing liberty from intelligence, but connecting it with personality, 
he defines it to be a cause which is determined to act by its proper 
energy alone. But (to say nothing of remoter difficulties) how 
liberty can be conceived, supposing always a plurality of modes of 
activity, without a knowledge of that plurality ; — how a faculty 
can resolve to act by preference in a particular manner, and not 
determine itself by final causes ; — how intelligence can influence a 
blind power without operating as an efficient cause ; — or how, in 
fine, morality can be founded on a liberty which, at best, only 
escapes necessity by taking refuge with chance :^— these are pro- 
blems which M. Cousin, in none of his works, has stated, and which 
we are confident he is unable to solve. 

After the tenor of our previous observations, it is needless to say 
that we regard M. Cousin's attempt to establish a general peace 
among philosophers, by the promulgation of his Eclectic theory, as a 
failure. But though no converts to his Unconditioned, and view- 
ing with regret what we must regard as the misapplication of his 
distinguished talents, we cannot disown a strong feeling of interest 
and admiration for those qualities, even in their excess, which have 
betrayed him, with so many other aspiring philosophers, into a 
pursuit which could only end in disappointment ; — we mean his 
love of truth, and his reliance on the powers of man. Not to 
despair of philosophy is " a last infirmity of noble minds." The 
stronger the intellect, the stronger the confidence in its force ; 
the more ardent the appetite for knowledge, the less are we pre- 
pared to canvass the uncertainty of the fruition. " The wish is 
parent to the thought." Loath to admit that our science is at 
best the reflection of a reality we cannot know, we strive to pene- 
trate to existence in itself ; and what we have laboured intensely 
to attain, we at last fondly believe we have accomplished. But, 
like Ixion, we embrace a cloud for a divinity. Conscious only of, 
— conscious only in and through, limitation, we think to compre- 
hend the infinite ; and dream even of establishing the science — the 
nescience of man, on an identity with the omniscience of God. It is 
this powerful tendency of the most vigorous minds to transcend the 



OUR HIGHEST WISDOM IS A LEARNED IGNORANCE. 37 

sphere of our faculties, which makes a " learned ignorance " the 
most difficult acquirement, perhaps, indeed, the consummation, of 
knowledge. In the words of a forgotten, but acute philosopher : — 
" Magna, immo maxima pars sapiential est, — qu&dam aiquo animo 
nescire velle" * 

{ "Infinitas ! Lsfinitas ! 
Hie mundus est infinitas. Secare mens at pergito, 

Infinitas et totus est, Nunquam secare desine ; 

(Nam mente nunquam absolveris;) In seetione qualibet 

Infinitas et illius Infinitates dissecas. 

Pars quaelibet, partisque pars. Quiesce mens heic denique, 

Quod tangis est infinitas ; Arctosque nosce limites 

Quod cernis est infinitas ; Queis contineris undique ; 

Quod non vides corpusculum, Quiesce mens, et limites 

Sed mente sola concipis, In orbe cessa quaerere. 

Corpusculi et corpusculum, Quod quseris in te repperis : 

Hujusque pars corpusculi, In mente sunt, in mente sunt, 

Partisque pars, hujusque pars, Hi, quos requiris, termini ; 

In hacque parte quicquid est, A rebus absunt limites, 

Infinitatem contiuet. In hisce tantum infinitas, 

Infinitas ! Infinitas ! 

Proh, quantus heic acervus est ! 

Et quam nihil quod nostra mens 

Ex hoc acervo intelligit ! 

At ilia Mens vah, qualis est, 

Conspecta cui stant omnia ! 

In singulis quae perspicit 

Quaecunque sunt in singulis 

Et singulorum singulis ! "] 



* [See Appendix I. for testimonies in regard to the limitation of our 
knowledge.] 



II.-PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 



(October, 1830.) 

CEuvres Completes de Thomas Reid, chef de Vecole Ecossaise. 
Publiies par M. Th. Jouffroy, avec des Fragments de M. 
Royer-Collard, ct line Introduction de VEdlteur. — Tomes II. 
—VI. 8vo. Paris, 1828-9, (not completed.) 

We rejoice in the appearance of this work, — and for two rea- 
sons. We hail it as another sign of the convalescence of philoso- 
phy, in a great and influential nation ; and prize it as a seasonable 
testimony by intelligent foreigners, to the merits of a philosopher, 
whose reputation is, for the moment, under an eclipse at home. 

Apart from the practical corruption, of which (in the emphatic 
language of Ficlite) " the dirt-philosophy " may have been the 
cause, we regard the doctrine of mind, long dominant in France, 
as more pernicious, through the stagnation of thought which it 
occasioned, than for the speculative errors which it set afloat. The 
salutary fermentation, which the scepticism of Hume determined 
in Scotland and in Germany, did not extend to that country; and 
the dogmatist there slumbered on, unsuspicious of his principles, 
nay even resigned to conclusions, which would make philosophy 
to man, the solution of the terrific oracle to CEdipus: — 
11 Mayst thou ne'er learn the truth of what thou art!" 

" Since the metaphysic of Locke," says M. Cousin, " crossed 
the channel, on the light and brilliant wings of Voltaire's imagina- 

* [In French by M. Peisse ; in Italian by S. Lo Gatto ; in Cross's Selections. 

Some deletions, found necessary in consequence of the unexpected length 
to which the Article extended, (especially from the second paragraph on this 
page, to " contributed," near the bottom of p. 41), have been restored. One 
note has been omitted, which Mr Napier had appended ; not that I would 
proclaim a dissent from its statements, but simply because it is not mine. 
I have added little or nothing to this criticism beyond references to my Dis- 
sertations supplementary of Reid, when the points under discussion are there 
more fully or more accurately treated] 



SPECULATION HIGHER THAN SPECULATIVE TRUTH. 39 

tion; Sensualism has reigned in France, without contradiction, 
and with an authority of which there is no parallel in the whole 
history of philosophy. It is a fact, marvellous but incontestable, 
that from the time of Condillac, there has not appeared among us 
any philosophical work, at variance with his doctrine, which has 
produced the smallest impression on the public mind. Condillac 
thus reigned in peace ; and his domination, prolonged even to our 
own days, through changes of every kind, pursued its tranquil 
course, apparently above the reach of danger. Discussion had 
ceased: his disciples had only to develope the words of their master : 
philosophy seemed accomplished." — [Journal des Savans, 1819.) 

JSTor would such a result have been desirable, had the one ex- 
clusive opinion been true, as it was false, — innocent, as it was cor- 
ruptive. If the accomplishment of philosophy imply a cessation 
of discussion, — if the result of speculation be a paralysis of itself; 
the consummation of knowledge is the condition of intellectual 
barbarism. Plato has profoundly denned man, " the hunter of 
truth ; " for in this chase, as in others, the pursuit is all in all, 
the success comparatively nothing. "Did the Almighty," says 
Lessing, " holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search 
after Truth, deign to proffer me the one, I might prefer ; — in all 
humility but without hesitation, I should request — Search after 
Truth" We exist only as we energise ; pleasure is the reflex of 
unimpeded energy ; energy is the mean by which our faculties 
are developed ; and a higher energy the end which their develop- 
ment proposes. In action is thus contained the existence, happi- 
ness, improvement, and perfection of our being ; and knowledge 
is only precious, as it may afford a stimulus to the exercise of our 
powers, and the condition of their more complete activity. Specu- 
lative truth is, therefore, subordinate to speculation itself; and its 
value is directly measured by the quantity of energy which it 
occasions, — immediately in its discovery, — mediately through its 
consequences. Life to Endymion was not preferable to death ; 
aloof from practice, a waking error is better than a sleeping truth. 
— Neither, in point of fact, is there found any proportion between 
the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which 
they are deposited. Every learner in science, is now familiar 
with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of knowing ; 
yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, among 
our masters of modern science, rank higher than intellectual bar- 
barians ! Ancient Greece and modern Europe prove, indeed, that 
'•'the march of intellect " is no inseparable concomitant of " the 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

inarch of science " ; — that the cultivation of the individual is not 
to be rashly confounded with the progress of the species. 

But if the possession of theoretical facts be not convertible with 
mental improvement; and if the former be important only as 
subservient to the latter ; it follows, that the comparative utility 
of a study is not to he principally estimated by the complement 
of truths which it may communicate ; but by the degree in which 
it determines our higher capacities to action. But though this be 
the standard by which the different methods, the different branches, 
and the different masters, of philosophy, ought to be principally, 
(and it is the only criterion by which they can all be satisfac- 
torily) tried; it is nevertheless a standard, by which, neither 
methods, nor sciences, nor philosophers, have ever yet been even 
inadequately appreciated. The critical history of philosophy, in 
this spirit, has still to be written ; and when written, how opposite 
will be the rank, which, on the higher and more certain standard, 
it will frequently adjudge, — to the various branches of knowledge, 
and the various modes of their cultivation, — to different ages, and 
countries, and individuals, from that which has been hitherto par- 
tially awarded, on the vacillating authority of the lower ! 

On this ground (which we have not been able fully to state, 
far less adequately to illustrate,) we rest the pre-eminent utility 
of metaphysical speculations. That they comprehend all the 
sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest ; — that 
every (natural) conclusion concerning God, the soul, the present 
worth, and the future destiny of man, is exclusively metaphysi- 
cal, will be at once admitted. But we do not found the import- 
ance, on the paramount dignity, of the pursuit. It is as the best 
gymnastic of the mind, — as a mean, principally, and almost 
exclusively conducive to the highest education of our noblest 
powers, that we would vindicate to these speculations the neces- 
sity, which has too frequently been denied them. By no other 
intellectual application (and least of all by physical pursuits) is the 
soul thus reflected on itself, and its faculties concentered in such 
independent, vigorous, unwonted and continued energy; — by none, 
therefore, are its best capacities so variously and intensely evolved. 
" Where there is most life, there is the victory." 

Let it not be believed, that the mighty minds who have culti- 
vated these studies, have toiled in vain. If they have not always 
realised truth, they have always determined exertion ; and in the 
congenial eloquence of the elder Scaliger : — " Eae subtilitates, 
quanquam sint animis otiosis otiose atque inutiles ; vegetis tamen 



UTILITY OF METAPHYSICAL STUDIES. 41 

ingeniis summam cognoscendi afferunt voluptatem, — sitae, scilicet 
in fastigio ejus sapientise, quae rerum omnium principia contem- 
platur. Et quamvis harum indagatio non sit utilis ad machinas 
farinarias conficiendas; exuit tamen animum inscitiae rubigine, 
acuitque ad alia. Eo denique splendore afficit, ut praeluceat sibi 
ad nanciscendum primi opificis similitudinem. Qui, ut omnia 
plene ac perfecte est, at prseter et supra omnia ; ita eos, qui 
scientiarum studiosi sunt, suos esse voluit, ipsorumque intellectum 
rerum dominum constituit." * 

The practical danger which has sometimes been apprehended 
from metaphysical pursuits, has in reality only been found to 
follow from their stunted and partial cultivation. The poison has 
grown up ; the antidote has been repressed. In Britain and in 
Germany, where speculation has remained comparatively free, 
the dominant result has been highly favourable to religion and 
morals ; whilst the evils which arose in France, arose from the 
benumbing influence of a one effete philosophy ; and have, in 
point of fact, mainly been corrected by the awakened spirit of 
metaphysical inquiry itself. 

With these views, we rejoice, as we said, in the appearance of 
this translation of the works of Reid — in Paris — and under the 
auspices of so distinguished an editor as M. Jouffroy, less, cer- 
tainly, as indicating the triumph of any particular system or 
school, than as a pledge, among many others, of the zealous yet 
liberal and unexclusive spirit, with which the science of mind has 
of late been cultivated in France. In the history of French phi- 
losophy, indeed, the last ten years stand in the most remarkable 
contrast to the hundred immediately preceding. The state of 
thraldom in that country during the century to one chronic des- 
potism, — perpetuating itself by paralysing speculation, in render- 
ing its objects, objects of disgust, — we have already presented, in 
a striking passage, written by M. Cousin, towards its conclusion ; 
but a very different picture would await his pencil, were he now 
to delineate the subsequent progress of that spirit of philosophy, 
to whose emancipation, recovery, and exaltation, during the decade, 
he has himself so powerfully contributed. The present contrast, 
indeed, which the philosophical enthusiasm of France exhibits to 

* Bacon himself, the great champion of physical pursuits : — " Xon inutiles 
sciential existimandas sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si ingenia acuant et 
ordinent." — Hume, Burke, Kant, Stewart, &c, &c, might be quoted to the 
same effect. — Compare Aristotle, Metaph. i. 2 ; Eth. Nic. x. 7. 



42 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

the speculative apathy of Britain, is any thing but nattering to 
ourselves. The new spirit of metaphysical inquiry, which the 
French imbibed from Germany and Scotland, arose with them 
precisely at the time when the popularity of psychological re- 
searches began to decline with us ; and now, when all interest in 
these speculations seems here to be extinct, they are there seen 
nourishing, in public favour, with a universality and vigour cor- 
responding to their encouragement. 

The only example, indeed, that can be adduced of any interest 
in such subjects, recently exhibited in this country, is the favour- 
able reception of Dr Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the 
Mind. This work, however, we regard as a concurrent cause of 
the very indifference we lament, and as a striking proof of its 
reality. 

As a cause : — These lectures have certainly done much to jus- 
tify the general neglect of psychological pursuits. Dr Brown's 
high reputation for metaphysical acuteness, gave a presumptive 
authority to any doctrine he might promulgate ; and the personal 
relations in which he stood to Mr Stewart afforded every assu- 
rance, that he would not revolt against that philosopher's opi- 
nions, rashly, or except on grounds that would fully vindicate his 
dissent. In these circumstances, what was the impression on the 
public mind ; when all that was deemed best established, — all that 
was claimed as original and most important in the philosophy of 
Reid and Stewart, was proclaimed by their disciple and successor 
to be naught but a series of misconceptions, only less ivonderful in 
their commission than in the general acquiescence in their truth ? 
Confidence was at once withdrawn from a pursuit, in which the 
most sagacious inquirers were thus at fault ; and the few who 
did not relinquish the study in despair, clung with implicit faith 
to the revelation of the new apostle. 

As a proof: — These lectures afford evidence of how greatly 
talent has, of late, been withdrawn from the field of metaphysical 
discussion. This work has now been before the world for ten 
years. In itself it combines many of the qualities calculated to 
attract public, and even popular, attention ; while its admirers 
have exhausted hyperbole in its praise, and disparaged every 
philosophic name to exalt the reputation of its author. Yet, 
though attention has been thus concentered on these lectures for 
so long a period, and though the high ability and higher autho- 
rity of Dr Brown, deserved and would have recompensed the 



BROWN'S ATTACK ON REID. 43 

labour ; we are not aware that any adequate attempt has yet been 
made to subject them, in whole or in part, to an enlightened and 
impartial criticism. The radical inconsistencies which they involve, 
in every branch of their subject, remain undeveloped ; their un- 
acknowledged appropriations are still lauded as original ; their 
endless mistakes, in the history of philosophy, stand yet uncor- 
rected ; and their frequent misrepresentations of other philo- 
sophers continue to mislead. * In particular, nothing has more 
convinced us of the general neglect, in this country, of psycholo- 
gical science, than that Dr Brown's ignorant attack on Beid, 
and, through Reid, confessedly on Stewart, has not long since 
been repelled; — except, indeed, the general belief that it was 
triumphant. 

In these circumstances, we felt gratified, as we said, with the 
present honourable testimony to the value of Dr Reid's specula- 
tions in a foreign country ; and have deemed this a seasonable 
opportunity of expressing our own opinion on the subject, and of 
again vindicating, we trust, to that philosopher, the well-earned 
reputation of which he has been too long defrauded in his own. 
If we are not mistaken in our view, we shall, in fact, reverse the 
marvel, and retort the accusation ; in proving that Dr Brown 
himself is guilty of that " series of wonderful misconceptions," of 
which he so confidently arraigns his predecessors. 

" Turpe est doctori, cum culpa redarguit ipsum." 

This, however, let it be recollected, is no point of merely per- 



* We shall, in the sequel, afford samples of these " inconsistencies," 
"mistakes," "misrepresentations," — but not of Brown's "appropriations." 
To complete the cycle, and vindicate our assertion, we may here adduce one 
specimen of the way in which discoveries have been lavished on him, in 
consequence of his omission (excusable, perhaps, in the circumstances) to ad- 
vertise his pupils when he was not original. — Brown's doctrine of General- 
ization, is identical with that commonly taught by philosophers — not Scot- 
tish ; and, among these, by authors, with whose works his lectures prove 
him to have been well acquainted. But if a writer, one of the best informed 
of those who, in this country, have of late cultivated this branch of philo- 
sophy, could, among other expressions equally encomiastic, speak of Brown's 
return to the vulgar opinion, on such a point, as of "a discovery, fyc. which 
will, in all future ages, be regarded as one of the most important steps ever 
made in metaphysical science ; " how incompetent must ordinary readers be to 
place Brown on his proper level, — how desirable would have been a critical 
examination of his Lectures to distribute to him his own, and to estimate his 
property at its true value : [See Diss, on Eeid, pp. 868, 869, alibi.] 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

sonal concernment. It is true, indeed, that either Reid accom- 
plished nothing, or the science has retrograded under Brown. 
But the question itself regards the cardinal point of metaphysical 
philosophy ; and its determination involves the proof or the refu- 
tation of scepticism. 

The subject we have undertaken can, with difficulty, be com- 
pressed within the limits of a single article. This must stand our 
excuse for not, at present, noticing the valuable accompaniment 
to Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers, in the Fragments of 
M. Royer-Collard's Lectures, which are appended to the third and 
fourth volumes of the translation. A more appropriate occasion for 
considering these may, however, occur, when the first volume, 
containing M. Jouffroy's Introduction, appears ; of which, from 
other specimens of his ability, we entertain no humble expec- 
tations. 

" Reid," says Dr Brown, " considers his confutation of the ideal 
system as involving almost everything which is truly his. Yet 
there arc few circumstances connected witli the fortune of modern 
philosophy, that appear to mc more wonderful, than that a mind 
like Dr Reid's, so learned in the history of metaphysical science, 
should have conceived, that on this point, any great merit, at least 
any merit of originality, was justly referable to him particularly. 
Indeed, the only circumstance which appears to me wonderful, is, 
that the claim thus made by him should have been so readily and 
generally admitted." {Led. xxv. p. 155.) 

Dr Brown then proceeds, at great length, to show : 1°, That 
Reid, in his attempt to overthrow what he conceived " the com- 
mon theory of ideas," wholly misunderstood the catholic opinion, 
which was, in fact, identical with his own ; and actually attri- 
buted to all philosophers " a theory which had been universally, 
or, at least, almost universally, abandoned at the time he wrote ;" 
and, 2°, That the doctrine of perception, which Reid so absurdly 
fancies he had first established, affords, in truth, no better evi- 
dence of the existence of an external world, than even the long 
abandoned hypothesis which he had taken such idle labour to 
refute. 

In every particular of this statement, Dr Brown is completely, 
and even curiously, wrong. He is out in his prelusive flourish, — 
out in his serious assault. Reid is neither " so learned in the 
history of metaphysical science" as he verbally proclaims, nor so 
sheer an ignorant as he would really demonstrate. Estimated by 



CHARACTER OF BROWN'S ATTACK. 45 

aught above a very vulgar standard, Reid's knowledge of Philo- 
sophical opinions was neither extensive nor exact ; and Mr Stew- 
art was himself too competent and candid a judge, not fully to 
acknowledge the deficiency.* But Reid's merits as a thinker are 
too high, and too securely established, to make it necessary to 
claim for his reputation an erudition to which he himself advances 
no pretension. And, be his learning what it may, his critic, at 
least, has not been able to convict him of a single error ; while 
Dr Brown himself rarely opens his mouth upon the older authors, 
without betraying his absolute unacquaintance with the matters 
on which he so intrepidly discourses. — JNor, as a speculator, does 
Reid's superiority admit, we conceive, of doubt. With all admi- 
ration of Brown's general talent, we do not hesitate to assert, 
that, in the points at issue between the two philosophers, to say 
nothing of others, he has completely misapprehended Reid's phi- 
losophy, even in its fundamental position, — the import of the 
sceptical reasoning, — and the significance of the only argument by 
which that reasoning is resisted. But, on the other hand, as 
Reid can only be defended on the ground of misconception, the 
very fact, that his great doctrine of perception could actually be 
reversed by so acute an intellect as Brown's, would prove that 
there must exist some confusion and obscurity in his own deve- 
lopment of that doctrine, to render such a misinterpretation 
possible. Nor is this presumption wrong. In truth, Reid did 
not generalise to himself an adequate notion of the various possi- 
ble theories of perception, some of which he has accordingly con- 
founded : while his error of commission in discriminating con- 
sciousness as a special faculty, and his error of omission in not 
discriminating intuitive from representative knowledge, — a dis- 
tinction without which his peculiar philosophy is naught, — have 
contributed to render his doctrine of the intellectual faculties 
prolix, vacillating, perplexed, and sometimes even contradictory. 

Before proceeding to consider the doctrine of perception in 
relation to the points at issue between Reid and his antagonist, 
it is therefore necessary to disintricate the question, by relieving 
it of these two errors, bad in themselves, but worse in the con- 
fusion which they occasion; for, as Bacon truly observes, — 
" citius emergit Veritas ex errore quam ex confusione." And, 
first, of consciousness. 



* (Dissertation, &c. Part ii. p. 197.) [In my foot notes to Reid will be 
found abundant evidence of this deficiency.] 



4!) PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and philosophers in general, have 
regarded Consciousness, not as a particular faculty, but as the 
universal condition of intelligence. Reid, on the contrary, fol- 
lowing, probably, Hutcheson, and followed by Stewart, Royer- 
Collard, and others, has classed consciousness as a co-ordinate 
faculty with the other intellectual powers; distinguished from 
them, not as the species from the individual, but as the individual 
from the individual. And as the particular faculties have each 
their peculiar object, so the peculiar object of consciousness is, the 
operations of the other faculties themselves, to the exclusion of the 
objects about which these operations arc conversant. 

This analysis we regard as false. For it is impossible : in the 
frst place, to discriminate consciousness from all the other cogni- 
tive faculties, or to discriminate any one of these from conscious- 
ness ; and, in the second, to conceive a faculty cognisant of the 
various mental operations, without being also cognisant of their 
several objects. 

We know; and We know that we know: — these propositions, 
logically distinct, are really identical; each implies the other. 
We know (i. e. feel, perceive, imagine, remember, &c.) only as we 
know that ire thus know ; and we know that we know, only as we 
know in some particular manner, (i. e. feel, perceive, &c.) So true 
is the scholastic brocard : — " Non sentimus nisi sentiamus nos 
sentire ; non sentimus nos sentire nisi sentiamus." — The attempt 
to analyse the cognition i" know, and the cognition / know that 1 
know, into the separate energies of distinct faculties, is therefore 
vain. But this is the analysis of Reid. Consciousness, which the 
formula / know that I know adequately expresses, he views as a 
power specifically distinct from the various cognitive faculties 
comprehended under the formula i" know, precisely as these facul- 
ties are severally contradistinguished from each other. But here 
the parallel does not hold. I can feel without perceiving, I can 
perceive without imagining, I can imagine without remember- 
ing, I can remember without judging (in the emphatic significa- 
tion), I can judge without willing. One of these acts does not 
immediately suppose the other. Though modes merely of the 
same indivisible subject, they are modes in relation to each other, 
really distinct, and admit, therefore, of psychological discrimina- 
tion. But can I feel without being conscious that I feel ? — can I 
remember, without being conscious that I remember ? or, can I 
be conscious, without being conscious that I perceive, or imagine, 



CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 47 

or reason, — that I energise, in short, in some determinate mode, 
which Reid would view as the act of a faculty specifically different 
from consciousness ? That this is impossible, Reid himself admits. 
" Unde," says Tertullian, — " unde ista tormenta cruciandae sim- 
plicitatis et suspendendse veritatis? Quis mihi exhibebit sensum 
non intelligentem se sentire ? " — But if, on the one hand, con- 
sciousness be only realised under specific modes, and cannot 
therefore exist apart from the several faculties in cumulo ; and if, 
on the other, these faculties can all and each only be exerted under 
the condition of consciousness ; consciousness, consequently, is not 
one of the special modes into which our mental activity may be 
resolved, but the fundamental form, — the generic condition of 
them all. Every intelligent act is thus a modified consciousness ; 
and consciousness a comprehensive term for the complement of our 
cognitive energies. 

But the vice of Dr Reid's analysis is further manifested in his 
arbitrary limitation of the sphere of consciousness ; proposing to 
it the various intellectual operations, but excluding their objects. 
" I am conscious," he says, " of perception, but not of the object 
I perceive ; I am conscious of memory, but not of the object I 
remember." 

The reduction of consciousness to a particular faculty entailed 
this limitation. For, once admitting consciousness to be cogni- 
sant of objects as of operations, Reid could not, without absurdity, 
degrade it to the level of a special power. For thus, in the first 
place, consciousness coextensive with all our cognitive faculties, 
would yet be made co-ordinate with each : and, in the second, two 
faculties would be supposed to be simultaneously exercised about 
the same object, to the same intent. 

But the alternative which Reid has chosen is, at least, equally 
untenable. The assertion, that we can be conscious of an act of 
knowledge, without being conscious of its object, is virtually 
suicidal. A mental operation is only what it is, by relation to its 
object ; the object at once determining its existence, and specify- 
ing the character of its existence. But if a relation cannot be 
comprehended in one of its terms, so we cannot be conscious of 
an operation, without being conscious of the object to which it 
exists only as correlative. For example, We are conscious of a 
perception, says Reid, but are not conscious of its object. Yet 
how can we be conscious of a perception, that is, how can we know 
that a perception exists, — that it is a perception, and not another 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

mental state, — and that it is the perception of a rose, and of 
nothing but a rose ; unless this consciousness involve a knowledge 
(or consciousness) of the object, which at once determines the 
existence of the act, — specifies its kind, — and distinguishes its indi- 
viduality ? Annihilate the object, you annihilate the operation; 
annihilate the consciousness of the object, you annihilate the con- 
sciousness of the operation. In the greater number indeed of our 
cognitive energies, the two terms of the relation of knowledge 
exist only as identical; the object admitting only of a logical dis- 
crimination from the subject. I imagine a Hippogryph. The 
Hippogryph is at once the object of the act and the act itself. 
Abstract the one, the other has no existence : deny me the con- 
sciousness of the Hippogryph, you deny me the consciousness of 
the imagination ; I am conscious of zero ; I am not conscious at 
all. 

A difficulty may here be started in regard to two faculties, — 
Memory and Perception. 

Memory is defined by Reid " an immediate knowledge of the 
past ; " and is thus distinguished from consciousness, which, with 
all philosophers, he views as "an immediate knowledge of the 
present." We may therefore be conscious of the act of memory 
as present, but of its object as past, consciousness is impossible. 
And certainly, if Reid's definition of memory be admitted, this 
inference cannot be disallowed. But memory is not an immediate 
knowledge of the past ; an immediate knowledge of the past is a 
contradiction in terms. This is manifest, whether we look from 
the act to the object, ox from the object to the act. — To be known 
immediately, an object must be known in itself; to be known in 
itself, it must be known as actual, now existent, present. Rut the 
object of memory is past — not present, not now existent, not actual ; 
it cannot therefore be known in itself. If known at all, it must 
be known in something different from itself ; i. e. mediately ; and 
memory as an "immediate knowledge of the past," is thus impossi- 
ble. — Again : memory is an act of knowledge ; an act exists only 
as present ; and a present knowledge can be immediately cogni- 
sant only of a present object. But the object known in memory 
is past; consequently, either memory is not an act of knowledge 
at all, or the object immediately known is present ; and the past, 
if known, is known only through the medium of the present ; on 
either alternative memory is not " an immediate knowledge of the 
past." Thus, memory, like our other faculties, affords only an 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 49 

immediate knowledge of the present ; and, like them, is nothing 
more than consciousness variously modified.* 

In regard to Perception : Reid allows an immediate knowledge 
of the affections of the subject of thought, mind, or self, and an 
immediate knowledge of the qualities of an object really different 
from self — matter. To the former, he gives the name of con- 
sciousness, to the latter, that of perception. Is consciousness, as 
an immediate knowledge, purely subjective, not to be discri- 
minated from perception, as an immediate knowledge, really 
objective? — A logical difference we admit; a psychological we 
deny. 

Relatives are known only together : the science of opposites 
is one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only 
in correlation and contrast, — and by the same common act : while 
knowledge, as at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, may 
be indifferently defined an antithetic synthesis, or a synthetic 
antithesis of its terms. Every conception of self, necessarily 
involves a conception of not-self: every perception of what is dif- 
ferent from me, implies a recognition of the percipient subject 
in contradistinction from the object perceived. In one act of 
knowledge, indeed, the object is the prominent element, in an- 
ther the subject ; but there is none in which either is known 
out of relation to the other. The immediate knowledge which 
Reid allows of things different from the mind, and the immediate 
knowledge of mind itself, cannot therefore be split into two dis- 
tinct acts. In perception, as in the other faculties, the same indi- 
visible consciousness is conversant about both terms of the rela- 
tion of knowledge. Distinguish the cognition of the subject from 
the cognition of the object of perception, and you either annihilate 

* The only parallel we know to this misconception of Reid's is the opinion 
on which Fromondus animadverts. " In primis displicet nobis plurimorum 
recentiorum philosophia, qui sensuum interiorum operationes, ut phantasia- 
tionem, memorationem, et reminiscentiam, circa imagines, recenter aut olim 
spiritibus vel cerebro impressas, versari negant ; sed proxime circa objecta 
quceforis sunt. Ut cum quis meminit se vidisse leporem currentem ; memo- 
ria, inquiunt, non intuetur et attingit imaginem leporis in cerebro asserva- 
tam, sed solum leporem ipsum qui cursu trqjiciebat campum, &c. &c.' 
{Philosophia Christiana de Anima. Lovanii. 1649. L. iii. c. 8. art. 8.) 
Who the advocates of this opinion were, we are ignorant ; but more than 
suspect that, as stated, it is only a misrepresentation of the Cartesian doc- 
trine, then on the ascendaut. [Lord Monboddo has, however, a doctrine of 
the sort.] 

D 



50 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

the relation of knowledge itself, which exists only in its terms 
being comprehended together in the unity of consciousness ; or 
you must postulate a higher faculty, which shall again reduce 
to one, the two cognitions you have distinguished ; — that is, you 
are at last compelled to admit, in an unphilosophical complexity, 
that common consciousness of subject and object, which you set 
out with denying in its philosophical simplicity. Consciousness 
and immediate knoiuledge are thus terms universally convertible ; 
and if there be an immediate knowledge of things external, there 
is consequently the consciousness of an outer ivorld. * 

Reid's erroneous analysis of consciousness is not perhaps of 
so much importance in itself, as from causing confusion in its 
consequences. Had he employed this term as tantamount to 
immediate knowledge in general, whether of self or not, and 
thus distinctly expressed what he certainly [?] taught, that mind 
and matter are both equally known to us as existent and in them- 
selves ; Dr Brown could hardly have so far misconceived his doc- 
trine, as actually to lend him the very opinion which his whole 
philosophy was intended to refute, viz. that an immediate, and 
consequently a real, knowledge of external things is impossible. 
But this by anticipation. 

* How correctly Aristotle reasoned on this subject, may be seen from the 
following passage : — " When Ave perceive (otioticcuopsQot" — the Greeks, per- 
haps fortunately, had no special term for consciousness) — " when we perceive 
that we see, hear, &c. it is necessary, that by sight itself we perceive that 
we see, or by another sense. If by another sense, then this also must be a 
sense of sight, conversant equally about the object of sight, colour. Conse- 
quently, there must either be two senses of the same object, or every sense 
must be percipient of itself. Moreover, if the sense percipient of sight be 
different from sight itself, it follows, either that there is a regress to infinity, 
or we must admit, at last, some sense percipient of itself; but if so, it is 
more reasonable to admit this in the original sense at once." (De Anima, 
L. iii, c. 2. text. 136 ) Here Aristotle ought not to be supposed to mean 
that every sense is an independent faculty of perception, and, as such, con- 
scious of itself. Compare De Som. et Vig. c. 2. and Probl. (if indeed his) 
sect. xi. § 33. His older commentators — Alexander, Themistius, Simplicius 
— follow their master. Philoponus and Michael Ephesius desert his doctrine, 
and attribute this self- consciousness to a peculiar faculty which they call 
Attention (to ^oasKrtKov.) This is the earliest example we know of this 
false analysis, which, when carried to its last absurdity, has given us con- 
sciousness, and attention, and reflection, as distinct powers. Of the school- 
men, satius est silere, quam parum dicere. Nemesius, and Plutaichus of 
Athens preserved by Philoponus, accord this reflex consciousness to intellect 
as opposed to sense. Plato varies in his Theaetetus and Charmides. 



REPRESENTATIVE AND PRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. 51 

This leads us to the second error, — the non-distinction of repre- 
sentative from presentative or intuitive knowledge.* The reduction 
of consciousness to a special faculty involved this confusion. For 
had Reid perceived that all our faculties are only consciousness, 
and that consciousness as an immediate knowledge is only of the 
present and actual, he would also have discovered that the past 
and possible, either could not be known to us at all, or could be 
known only in and through the present and actual, i. e. mediately. 
But a mediate knowledge is necessarily a representative know- 
ledge. For if the present, or actual in itself, makes known to us 
the past and possible through itself, this can only be done by a 
vicarious substitution or representation. And as the knowledge 
of the past is given in memory, (using that term in its vulgar uni- 
versality) and that of the possible in imagination, these two facul- 
ties are powers of representative knowledge. Memory is an 
immediate knowledge of & present thought, involving an absolute 
belief that this thought represents another act of knowledge that 
has been. Imagination (which we use in its widest signification, to 
include conception or simple apprehension) is an immediate know- 
ledge of an actual thought, which, as not subjectively self contra- 
dictory, (». e. logically possible), involves the hypothetical belief 
that it objectively may be (i. e. is really possible). 

Nor is philosophy here at variance with nature. The learned and 
unlearned agree, that in memory and imagination, naught of which 
we are conscious lies beyond the sphere of self, and that in these acts 
the object knoivn is only relative to a reality supposed to be. No- 
thing but Reid's superstitious horror of the ideal theory, could 
have blinded him so far, as not to see that these faculties are, of 
necessity, mediate and representative. In this, however, he not 
only over-shot the truth, but almost frustrated his whole philo- 
sophy. For, he thus affords a ground (and the only ground, 
though not perceived by Brown), on which it could be argued 
that his doctrine of perception was not intuitive — was not presen- 
tative. For if he reject the doctrine of ideas not less in memory 
and imagination, which must be representative faculties, than in 
perception, which may be intuitive, and if he predicate immediate 
knowledge equally of all ; — it can plausibly be contended, in 
favour of Brown's conclusion, that Reid did not really intend to 
allow a proper intuitive or presentative perception, and that he 

* [See Dissertations on Reid, p. 804—815.] 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

only abusively gave the name of immediate knowledge to the 
simplest form of the representative theory, in contradistinction to 
the more complex. But this also by anticipation. 

There exists, therefore, a distinction of knowledge, — as imme- 
diate, intuitive, or presentative, and as mediate or representative. — 
The former is logically simple, as only contemplative : the latter 
logically complex, as both representative, and contemplative of 
the representation. — In the one, the object is single, and the word 
univocal : in the other it is double, and the term aequivocal ; the 
object known and representing, being different from the object 
unknown and represented. — The knowledge in an intuitive act, as 
convertible with existence, is asssertory ; and the reality of its 
only object is given unconditionally, as a fact : the knowledge in 
a representative act, as not convertible with existence, is proble- 
matical; and the reality of its principal object is given hypothe- 
tically, as an inference. — Representative knowledge is purely 
subjective, for its object known is always ideal ; presentative may 
be either subjective or objective, for its one object may be either 
ideal or material. — Considered in themselves : an intuitive cognition 
is complete, as absolute and irrespective of aught beyond the com- 
pass of knowledge ; a representative incomplete, as relative to a 
transcendent something, beyond the sphere of consciousness. — 
Considered in relation to their objects : the former is complete, its 
object being known and real ; the latter incomplete, its object 
known, being unreal, and its real object unknown. — Considered 
in relation to each other : immediate knowledge is complete, as all 
sufficient in itself; mediate incomplete, as realized only through 
the other.* 

* This distinction of intuitive or presentative and of representative know- 
ledge, overlooked, or rather abolished, in the theories of modern philosophy, 
is correspondent to the division of knowledge by certain of the schoolmen, 
into intuitive and abstractive. By the latter term, they also expressed abstract 
knowledge in its present signification. — " Cognitio intuitiva" says the Doctor 
Resolutissimus, " est ilia quae immediate tendit ad rem sibi prcesentem objec- 
tive, secundum ejus actualem existentiam ; sicut cum video colorem existentem 
in pariete, vel rosam, quam in manu teneo. Abstractiva, dicitur omnis cog- 
nitio, quae habetur de re non sic realiter prcesente in ratione objecti immediate 
cogniti." Now, when with a knowledge of this distinction of which Reid was 
ignorant, and rejecting equally with him not only species, but a representative 
perception, we say that many of the schoolmen have, in this respect, left be- 
hind them all modern philosophers ; we assert a paradox, but one which we 
are easily able to prove. Leibnitz spoke truly, when he said — " Aurum latere 
in stercore illo scholastico barbariei? [See Diss, on Reid, pp. 804-815.] 



IS PERCEPTION PRESENTATIVE ? 53 

So far there is no difficulty, or ought to have been none. The 
past and possible can only be known mediately by representation. 
But a more arduous, at least a more perplexed, question arises, 
when we ask : — Is all knowledge of the present or actual intuitive ? 
Is the knoiuledge of mind and matter equally immediate ? 

In regard to the immediate knowledge of mind, there is now at 
least no difficulty ; it is admitted not to be representative. The 
problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception of 
the qualities of matter. 

(To obviate misapprehension, we may here parenthetically 
observe, that all we do intuitively know of self, — all that we may 
intuitively know of not-self, is only relative. Existence absolutely 
and in itself, is to us as zero ; and while nothing is, so nothing is 
known to us, except those phases of being which stand in analogy 
to our faculties of knowledge. These we call qualities, pheno- 
mena, properties, &c. When we say, therefore, that a thing is 
known in itself, we mean only, that it stands face to face, in direct 
and immediate relation to the conscious mind; in other words, 
that, as existing, its phenomena form part of the circle of our 
knowledge, — exist, since they are known, and are known, because 
they exist.) 

If we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in ques- 
tion, the response is categorical and clear. When I concentrate 
my attention in the simplest act of perception, I return from my 
observation with the most irresistible conviction of two facts, or 
rather, two branches of the same fact ; — that / am, — and that 
something different from me exists. In this act, I am conscious of 
myself as the perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the 
object perceived ; and I am conscious of both existences in the 
same indivisible moment of intuition. The knowledge of the sub- 
ject does not precede nor follow the knowledge of the object ; — 
neither determines, neither is determined by, the other. The 
two terms of correlation stand in mutual counterpoise and equal 
independence; they are given as connected in the synthesis of 
knowledge, but as contrasted in the antithesis of existence. 

Such is the fact of perception revealed in consciousness, and as 
it determines mankind in general in their equal assurance of the 
reality of an external world, and of the existence of their own 
minds. Consciousness declares our knowledge of material quali- 
ties to be intuitive. Nor is the fact, as given, denied even by 
those who disallow its truth. So clear is the deliverance, that 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION, 

even the philosophers (as we shall hereafter see) who reject an 
intuitive perception, find it impossible not to admit, that their 
doctrine stands decidedly opposed to the voice of consciousness 
and the natural conviction of mankind. [This doctrine is, how- 
ever, to be asserted, only in subordination to the distinction of the 
Primary, Secundo-primary and Secondary Qualities of Matter. 
See Diss, on Reid, p. 845-874.] 

According as the truth of the fact of consciousness in perception 
is entirely accepted, accepted in part, or wholly rejected, six pos- 
sible and actual systems of philosophy result. We say explicitly 
— the truth of the fact. For the fact, as a phenomenon of con- 
sciousness, cannot be doubted ; since to doubt that we are conscious 
of this or that, is impossible. The doubt, as itself a phenomenon 
of consciousness, w T ould annihilate itself. [See Diss, on Reid, p. 
816-819.] 

1 . If the veracity of consciousness be unconditionally admitted, 
— if the intuitive knowledge of mind and matter, and the conse- 
quent reality of their antithesis be taken as truths, to be explained 
if possible, but in themselves are held as paramount to all doubt, 
the doctrine is established which we would call the scheme of 
Natural Realism or Natural Dualism. — 2. If the veracity of 
consciousness be allowed to the equipoise of the object and subject 
in the act, but rejected as to the reality of their antithesis, the 
system of Absolute Identity emerges, which reduces both mind 
and matter to phenomenal modifications of the same common sub- 
stance. — 3 and 4. If the testimony of consciousness be refused to 
the co-originality and reciprocal independence of the subject and 
object, two schemes are determined, according as the one or the 
other of the terms is placed as the original and genetic. Is the 
object educed from the subject, Idealism ; is the subject educed 
from the object, Materalism, is the result. — 5. Again, is the con- 
sciousness itself recognised only as a phenomenon, and the sub- 
stantial reality of both subject and object denied, the issue is 
Nihilism. 

6. These systems are all conclusions from an original interpre- 
tation of the fact of consciousness in perception, carried intrepidly 
forth to its legitimate issue. But there is one scheme, which, 
violating the integrity of this fact, and, with the complete idealist, 
regarding the object of consciousness in perception as only a 
modification of the percipient subject, or, at least, a phenomenon 
numerically different from the object it represents, — endeavours, 



SIX SCHEMES OF PERCEPTION AND OF PHILOSOPHY. 55 

however, to stop short of the negation of an external world, the 
reality of which, and the knowledge of whose reality, it seeks by 
various hypotheses, to establish and explain. This scheme, which 
we would term Cosmothetic Idealism, Hypothetical Realism or 
Hypothetical Dualism, — although the most inconsequent of all 
systems, has been embraced, under various forms, by the immense 
majority of philosophers. 

Of these systems, Dr Brown adheres to the last. He holds 
that the mind is conscious or immediately cognisant of nothing 
beyond its subjective states; but he assumes the existence of an 
external world beyond the sphere of consciousness, exclusively on 
the ground of our irresistible belief in its unknown reality. Inde- 
pendent of this belief, there is no reasoning on which the existence 
of matter can be vindicated ; the logic of the idealist he admits to 
be unassailable. 

But Brown not only embraces the scheme of hypothetical 
realism himself, he never suspects that Reid entertained any other 
doctrine. Brown's transmutation of Reid from a natural to a 
hypothetical realist, as a misconception of the grand and dis- 
tinctive tenet of a school, by one even of its disciples, is without 
a parallel in the whole history of philosophy : and this portentous 
error is prolific ; Chimmra chimceram parit. Were the evidence 
of the mistake less unambiguous, we should be disposed rather to 
question our own perspicacity, than to tax so subtle an intellect 
with so gross a blunder. 

Before establishing against his antagonist the true opinion of 
Reid, it will be proper first to generalize the possible forms, under 
which the hypothesis of a representative perception can be realised, 
as a confusion of some of these as actually held, on the part both 
of Reid and Brown, has tended to introduce no small confusion 
into the discussion. 

The hypothetical realist contends, that he is wholly ignorant 
of things in themselves, and that these are known to him, only 
through a vicarious phenomenon, of which he is conscious in 
perception ; 

" — Rerumque ignarus, Imagine gaudet." 
In other words, that the object immediately known and represent- 
ing is numerically different from the object really existing and 
represented. — Now this vicarious phenomenon, or immediate 
object, must either be numerically different from the percipient 
intellect, or a modification of that intellect itself. If the latter, it 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

must, again, either be a modification of the thinking substance, 
with a transcendent existence beyond the act of thought, or a 
modification identical with the act of perception itself. 

All possible forms of the representative hypothesis are thus 
. reduced to three, and these have all been actually maintained. 

1. The representative object not a modification of mind. 

2. The representative object a modification of mind, dependent 
for its apprehension, but not for its existence, on the act of 

consciousness. 

3. The representative object a modification of mind, non-exist- 
ent out of consciousness ; — the idea and its perception only dif- 
ferent relations of an act {state) really identical. 

In the first, the various opinions touching the nature and 
origin of the representative object; whether material, imma- 
terial, or between both ; whether physical or hyperphysical : 
whether propagated from the external object or generated in the 
medium; whether fabricated by the intelligent soul or in the 
animal life ; whether infused by God, or angels, or identical with 
the divine substance : — these afford in the history of philosophy 
so many subordinate modifications of this form of the hypothesis. 
— In the two latter, the subaltern theories have been determined 
by the difficulty to connect the representation with the reality, 
in a relation of causal dependence ; and while some philosophers 
have left it altogether unexplained, the others have been com- 
pelled to resort to the hyperphysical theories of divine assistance 
and a pre-established harmony. — Under the second, opinions have 
varied, whether the representative object be innate or factitious. 
[See Diss. p. 817-819.] 

The third of these forms of representation Reid does not seem 
to have understood. The illusion which made him view, in his 
doctrine, memory and imagination as powers of immediate know- 
ledge, though only representative faculties, under the third form, 
has, in the history of opinions regarding perception, puzzled him, 
as we shall see, in his exposition of the doctrine of Arnauld. He 
was not aware that there was a theory, neither identical with an 
intuitive perception, nor with the first or second form of the 
representative hypothesis ; with both of which he was sufficiently 
acquainted. — Dr Brown, on the contrary, who adopts the third 
and simplest modification of that hypothesis, appears ignorant of 
its discrimination from the second; and accordingly views the 
philosophers who held this latter form, as not distinguished in 



REID'S DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION, 57 

opinion fr,om himself. Of the doctrine of intuition he does not 
seem almost to have conceived the possibility. 

These being premised, we proceed to consider the greatest of 
all Brown's errors, in itself and in its consequences, — his miscon- 
ception of the cardinal position of Reid's philosophy, in supposing 
that philosopher as a hypothetical realist, to hold with himself the 
third form of the representative hypothesis, and not, as a natural 
realist, the doctrine of an intuitive perception. We are compelled 
to be brief; and to complete the evidence of the following proof 
(if more indeed be required), we must beg our readers, interested 
in the question, to look up the passages, to which we are able 
only to refer. [See Diss, on Reid, p. 819-824, The pages of 
the original editions here referred to are there marked.] 

In the first place, knowledge and existence are then only con- 
vertible when the reality is known in itself; for then only can 
we say, that it is known because it exists, and exists since it is 
known. And this constitutes an immediate, presentative, or intui- 
tive cognition, rigorously so called. — Nor did Reid contemplate 
any other. ' It seems admitted,' he says, < as a first principle, by 
' the learned and the unlearned, that what is really perceived must 
' exist, and that to perceive what does not exist is impossible. So 

• far the unlearned man and the philosopher agree.' — {Essays on 
the Intellectual Powers, p. 142.) 

In the second place, philosophers agree, that the idea or repre- 
sentative object in their theory, is in the strictest sense imme- 
diately perceived. — And so Reid understands them. ' I perceive 
' not, says the Cartesian, the external object itself; (so far he 
' agrees with the Peripatetic, and differs from the unlearned man ;) 

* but I perceive an image, or form, or idea, in my own mind, or 
1 in my brain. I am certain of the existence of the idea ; because 
' I immediately perceive it.' (L. c.) 

In the third place, philosophers concur in acknowledging, that 
mankind at large believe, that the external reality itself consti- 
tutes the immediate and only object of perception — So also Reid. 
' On the same principle, the unlearned man says, I perceive the 
' external object, and I perceive it to exist.' (L. c.) — ' The vulgar 
' undoubtedly believe, that it is the external object which we 
' immediately perceive, and not a representative image of it only. 
' It is for this reason, that they look upon it as perfect lunacy to 
' call in question the enistence of external objects.' (L. c.) — ' The 
' vulgar are firmly persuaded, that the very identical objects which 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

■ they perceive continue to exist when they do not perceive them ; 
' and are no less firmly persuaded, that when ten men look at 
' the sun or the moon they all see the same individual object? (P. 
166.) — Speaking of Berkeley : ' The vulgar opinion he reduces 

* to this, that the very things which we perceive by our senses do 
' really exist. This he grants.' (P. 165) — ' It is therefore ac- 
1 knowledged by this philosopher (Hume) to be a natural instinct 

* or prepossession, an universal and primary opinion of all men, 

* that the objects which we immediately perceive, by our senses, 
1 are not images in our minds, but external objects, and that their 
'< existence is independent of us and our perception.' (P. 201. 
See also pp. 143, 198, 199, 200, 206.) 

In these circumstances, if Reid : either 1°,— maintains, that his 
immediate perception of external things is convertible with their 
reality ; or 2°, — asserts that, in his doctrine of perception, the 
external reality stands, to the percipient mind, face to face, in the 
same immediacy of relation which the idea holds in the represen- 
tative theory of the philosophers ; or 3°, — declares the identity of 
his own opinion with the vulgar belief, as thus expounded by 
himself and the philosophers : — he could not more emphatically 
proclaim himself a natural realist, and his doctrine of perception, 
as intended, at least, a doctrine of intuition. And he does all 
three. 

The first and second. — ' We have before examined the reasons 
' given by philosophers to prove that ideas, and not external 
' objects, are the immediate objects of perception. We shall only 
' here observe, that if external objects be perceived imme- 
' diately,' [and he had just before asserted for the hundredth 
time that they were so perceived] ' we have the same reason 

' TO BELIEVE THEIR EXISTENCE, AS PHILOSOPHERS HAVE TO BE- 
' LIEVE THE EXISTENCE OF IDEAS, WHILE THEY HOLD THEM TO 
' BE THE IMMEDIATE OBJECTS OF PERCEPTION.' (P. 589. See 

also pp. 118, 138.) 

The third. — Speaking of the perception of the external world — 
' We have here a remarkable conflict between two contradictory 
1 opinions, wherein all mankind are engaged. On the one side 
' stand all the vulgar, who are unpractised in philosophical 
' researches, and guided by the uncorrupted primary instincts of 
' nature. On the other side, stand all the philosophers, ancient 
' and modern ; every man, without exception, who reflects. In this 



BROWNS ARGUMENT FOR REED'S REPRESENTATIONS! 59 

' DIVISION, TO MY GREAT HUMILIATION, I FIND MYSELF CLASSED 
' WITH THE VULGAR.' (P. 207.) 

Various other proofs of the same conclusion, could be adduced ; 
these for brevity we omit. — Brown's interpretation of the funda- 
mental tenet of Reid's philosophy, is therefore, not a simple mis- 
conception, but an absolute reversal of its real and even unambi- 
guous import. [This is too strong. See Diss. p. 820.] 

But the ground, on which Brown vindicates his interpretation, 
is not unworthy of the interpretation itself. The possibility of an 
intuition beyond the sphere of self, he can hardly be said to have 
contemplated ; but on one occasion, Reid's language seems, for a 
moment, to have actually suggested to him the question : — Might 
that philosopher not possibly regard the material object, as iden- 
tical with the object of consciousness in perception ? — On what 
ground does he reject the affirmative as absurd ? Plis reasoning 
is to this effect : — To assert an intuitive perception of matter, is to 
assert an identity of matter and mind, {for an immediacy of knoiv- 
ledge is convertible with a unity of existence) ; But Reid was a 
sturdy dualist ; Therefore, he could not maintain an immediate 
perception of the qualities of matter. (Led. xxv. pp. 159, 1G0.) 
In this syllogism, the major is a mere petitio principii, which 
Brown has not attempted to prove ; and which, as tried by the 
standard of all philosophical truth, is not only false, but even the 
converse of the truth ; while, admitting its accuracy, it cannot be 
so connected with the minor, as to legitimate the conclusion. 

If we appeal to consciousness, consciousness gives, even in the 
last analysis, — an the unity of knowledge, a duality of existence ; 
and peremptorily falsifies Brown's assumption, that not-self as 
known, is identical with self as knowing. Reid therefore, as a 
dualist, and on the supreme authority of consciousness, might 
safely maintain the immediacy of perception ; — nay, as a dualist 
Reid could not, consistently, have adopted the opinion which 
Brown argues, that, as a dualist, he must be regarded to have 
held. Mind and matter exist to us only in their qualities ; and 
these qualities exist to us only as they are known by us, i. e., as 
phenomena. It is thus merely from knowledge that we can infer 
existence, and only from the supposed repugnance or compatibility 
of phenomena, within our experience, are we able to ascend to the 
transcendent difference or identity of substances. Now, on the 
hypothesis that all we immediately know, is only a state or modi- 
fication or quality or phenomenon of the cognitive subject itself, — 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

how can we contend, that the phenomena of mind and matter, 
known only as modifications of the same, must be the modifications 
of different substances ; — nay, that only on this hypothesis of their 
substantial unity in knowledge, can their substantial duality in 
existence be maintained ? But of this again. 

Brown's assumption has no better foundation than the exagge- 
ration of a crotchet of philosophers ; which, though contrary to 
the evidence of consciousness, and consequently not only with- 
out but against all evidence, has yet exerted a more extensive 
and important influence, than any principle in the whole history 
of philosophy. This subject deserves a volume ; we can only 
afford it a few sentences. — Some philosophers (as Anaxagoras, 
Heraclitus, Alcmseon) maintained that knowledge implied even a 
contrariety of subject and object. But since the time of Em- 
pedocles, no opinion has been more universally admitted, than 
that the relation of knowledge inferred the analogy of existence. 
This analogy may be supposed in two potences. What knows 
and what is known, are either, 1°, similar, or, 2°, the same ; and 
if the general principle be true, the latter is the more philoso- 
phical. This principle it was, which immediately determined the 
whole doctrine of a representative perception. Its lower potence 
is seen in the intentional species of the schools, and in the ideas of 
Mallebranche and Berkeley ; its higher in the gnostic reasons of 
the Platonists, in the pre-existing species of Avicenna and the 
Arabians, in the ideas of Descartes and Leibnitz, in the phe- 
nomena of Kant, and in the external states of Dr Brown. It 
mediately determined the hierarchical gradation of faculties or 
souls of the Aristotelians, — the vehicular media of the Platonists, 
— the theories of a common intellect of Alexander, Themistius, 
Averroes, Cajetanus, and Zabarella, — the vision in the deity of 
Mallebranche, — and the Cartesian and Leibnitian doctrines of 
assistance, and predetermined harmony. To no other origin is to 
be ascribed the refusal of the fact of consciousness in its primitive 
duality; and the unitarian systems of identity, materialism, ideal- 
ism, are the result. 

But however universal and omnipotent this principle may have 
been, Beid was at once too ignorant of opinions, to be much in 
danger from authority, and too independent a thinker, to accept 
so baseless a fancy as a fact. "Mr Norris," says he, "is the 
only author I have met with who professedly puts the question, 
Whether material things can be perceived by us immediately f 



BROWN'S ARGUMENT DISPROVED. 61 

He has offered four arguments to show that they cannot. First, 
Material obiects are without the mind, and therefore there can 
be no union between the object and the percipient. Answer — 
This argument is lame, until it is shown to be necessary, that in 
perception there should be an union between the object and the 
percipient. Second, material objects are disproportioned to the 
mind, and removed from it by the whole diameter of Being. — This 
argument I cannot answer, because i" do not understand it." 
(Essays, I. P. p. 202.) 

The principle, that the relation of knowledge implies an ana- 
logy of existence, admitted without examination in almost every 
school, but which Reid, with an ignorance wiser than know- 
ledge, confesses he does not understand ; is nothing more than 
an irrational attempt to explain, what is, in itself, inexplicable. 
How the similar or the same is conscious of itself, is not a whit 
less inconceivable, than how one contrary is immediately perci- 
pient of another. It at best only removes our admitted ignorance 
by one step back ; and then, in place of our knowledge simply 
originating from the incomprehensible, it ostentatiously departs 
from the absurd. 

The slightest criticism is sufficient to manifest the futility of 
that hypothesis of representation, which Brown would substitute 
for Reid's presentative perception ; — although this hypothesis, 
under various modifications, be almost coextensive with the his- 
tory of philosophy. In fact, it fulfils none of the conditions of a 
legitimate hypothesis. 

In the first place, it is unnecessary. — It cannot show, that the 
fact of an intuitive perception, as given in consciousness, ought 
not to be accepted ; it is unable therefore to vindicate its own 
necessity, in order to explain the possibility of our knowledge of 
external things. — That we cannot show forth, how the mind is 
capable of knowing something different from self, is no reason to 
doubt that it is so capable. Every how (lion) rests ultimately on 
a that (Sri) ; every demonstration is deduced from something 
given and indemonstrable ; all that is comprehensible, hangs from 
some revealed fact, which we must believe as actual, but, cannot 
construe to the reflective intellect in its possibility. In conscious- 
ness, — in the original spontaneity of intelligence (uovg, locus prin- 
cipiorum), are revealed the primordial facts of our intelligent na- 
ture. Cousciousness is the fountain of all comprehensibility and 
illustration ; but as such, cannot be itself illustrated or compre- 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

hended. To ask how any fact of consciousness is possible, is to ask 
how consciousness itself is possible ; and to ask how consciousness 
is possible, is to ask how a being intelligent like man is possible. 
Could we answer this, the Serpent had not tempted Eve by an 
hyperbole: — "We should be as Gods." But as we did not create 
ourselves, and are not even in the secret of our creation ; we 
must take our existence, our knowledge upon trust: and that 
philosophy is the only true, because in it alone can truth be real- 
ised, which does not revolt against the authority of our natural 
beliefs. 

" The voice of Nature is the voice of God." 

To ask, therefore, a reason for the possibility of our intuition 
of external things, above the fact of its reality, as given in our 
perceptive consciousness, betrays, as Aristotle has truly said, an 
imbecility of the reasoning principle itself : — " Tovrov tyruv hoyou, 
cLtyivrcis tvjv u,io8viotv, uppcoaTioc, rig tart ^txuoioig.^ The natural realist, 
who accepts this intuition, cannot, certainly, explain it, because, 
as ultimate, it is a fact inexplicable. Yet, with Hudibras : — 
" He knows what's what ; and that's as high 
As metaphysic wit can fly." 

But the hypothetical realist — the cosmothetic idealist, who rejects 
a consciousness of aught beyond the mind, cannot require of the 
natural realist an explanation of how such a consciousness is pos- 
sible, until he himself shall have explained, what is even less con- 
ceivable, the possibility of representing (i. e. of knowing) the 
unknown. Till then, each founds on the incomprehensible ; but 
the former admits the veracity, the latter postulates the falsehood 
of that principle, which can alone confer on this incomprehensi- 
ble foundation the character of truth. The natural realist, whose 
watchword is — The facts of consciousness, the whole facts, and 
nothing but the facts, has therefore naught to fear from his anta- 
gonist, so long as consciousness cannot be explained nor redar- 
gued from without. If his system be to fall, it falls only with 
philosophy ; for it can only be disproved, by proving the menda- 
city of consciousness — of that faculty, 

" Quae nisi sit veri, ratio quoque falsa fit omnis ;" 
(" Which unless true, all reason turns a lie.") 

This leads us to the second violation of the laws of a legitimate 
hypothesis ; — the doctrine of a representative perception annihi- 
lates itself in subverting the universal edifice of knowledge. — 
Belying the testimony of consciousness to our immediate perception 



REPRESENTATION ISM NOT A LEGITIMATE HYPOTHESIS. 63 

of an outer world, it belies the veracity of consciousness alto- 
gether. But the truth of consciousness, is the condition of the 
possibility of all knowledge. The first act of hypothetical realism, 
is thus an act of suicide ; philosophy, thereafter, is at best but 
an enchanted corpse, awaiting only the exorcism of the sceptic, to 
relapse into its proper nothingness. — But of this we shall have 
occasion to treat at large, in exposing Brown's misprision of the 
argument from common sense. 

In the third place, it is the condition of a legitimate hypothe- 
sis, that the fact or facts for which it is excogitated to account, 
be not themselves hypothetical. — But so far is the principal fact, 
which the hypothesis of a representative perception is proposed 
to explain, from being certain ; its reality is even rendered pro- 
blematical by the proposed explanation itself. The facts, about 
which this hypothesis is conversant, are two ; — the fact of the 
mental modification, and the fact of the material reality. The 
problem to be solved is their connection ; and the hypothesis of 
representation is advanced, as the ratio of their correlation, in 
supposing that the former as known is vicarious of the latter as 
existing. There is however here a see-saw between the hypothe- 
sis and the fact : the fact is assumed as an hypothesis ; and the 
hypothesis explained as a fact; each is established, each is 
expounded, by the other. To account for the possibility of an 
unknown external world, the hypothesis of representation is 
devised; and to account for the possibility of representation, we 
imagine the hypothesis of an external world. Nothing could be 
more easy than to demonstrate, that on this supposition, the fact 
of the external reality is not only petitory but improbable. This, 
however, we are relieved from doing, by Dr Brown's own admis- 
sion, that " the sceptical aryumentfor the non-existence of an exter- 
nal world, as a mere play of reasoning, admits of no reply;" 
and we shall afterwards prove, that the only ground on which he 
attempts to vindicate this existence, (the ground of our natural 
belief in its reality,) is one, not competent to the hypothetical 
realist. We shall see, that if this belief be true, the hypothesis 
itself is superseded ; if false, that there is no fact for the hypo- 
thesis to explain. 

In the fourth place, a legitimate hypothesis must account for 
the phenomenon, about which it is conversant, adequately and 
without violence, in all its dependencies, relations, and peculiari- 
ties. — But the hypothesis in question, only accomplishes its end, 



64 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

— nay only vindicates its utility, by a mutilation, or, more pro- 
perly, by the destruction and re-creation, of the very phenomenon 
for the nature of which it would account. The entire phenomenon 
to be explained by the supposition of a representative perception, 
is the fact, given in consciousness, of the immediate knowledge or 
intuition of an existence different from self This simple pheno- 
menon it hews down into two fragments ; — into the existence and 
the intuition. The existence of external things, which is given 
only through their intuition, it admits ; the intuition itself, though 
the ratio cognoscendi, and to us therefore the ratio essendi of 
their reality, it rejects. But to annihilate what is prior and con- 
stitutive in the phenomenon, is, in truth, to annihilate the phe- 
nomenon altogether. The existence of an external world, which 
the hypothesis proposes to explain, is no longer even a truncated 
fact of consciousness ; for the existence given in consciousness, 
necessarily fell with the intuition on which it reposed. A repre- 
sentative perception, is therefore, an hypothetical explanation of 
a supposititious fact : it creates the nature it interprets. And 
in this respect, of all the varieties of the representative hypothe- 
sis, the third, or that which views in the object known a modifi- 
cation of thought itself, most violently outrages the phenome- 
non of consciousness it would explain. And this is Brown's. 
The first, saves the phenomenon of consciousness in so far as it 
preserves always the numerical, if not always the substantial, dif- 
ference between the object perceived and the percipient mind. 
The second, does not violate at least the antithesis of the object 
perceived and the percipient act. But in the third or simplest 
form of representatian, not only is the object known, denied to be 
itself the reality existing, as consciousness attests ; — this object 
revealed as not -self, is identified with the mental ego ; — nay, even, 
though given as permanent, with the transient energy of thought 
itself. 

In the fifth place, the fact, which a legitimate hypothesis is 
devised to explain, must be within the sphere of experience. — The 
fact, however, for which that of a representative perception 
accounts (the existence of external things), transcends, ex hypo- 
thesi, all experience ; it is the object of no real knowledge, but a 
bare ens rationis — a mere hyperphysical chimera. 

In the sixth and last place, an hypothesis itself is probable in 
proportion as it works simply and naturally ; that is in propor- 
tion as it is dependent on no subsidiary hypothesis, and as it 






REPRESENTATIONISM NOT A LEGITIMATE HYPOTHESIS. 65 

involves nothing, petitory, occult, supernatural, as an element of 
its explanation. In this respect, the doctrine of a representative 
perception is not less vicious than in others. To explain at all, it 
must not only postulate subsidiary hypotheses, but subsidiary 
miracles. — The doctrine in question attempts to explain the know- 
ledge of an unknown world, by the ratio of a representative per- 
ception : but it is impossible by any conceivable relation, to apply 
the ratio to the facts. The mental modification, of which, on the 
doctrine of representation, we are exclusively conscious in percep- 
tion, either represents (i. e. affords a mediate knowledge of) a real 
external world, or it does not. (We say only the reality; to 
include all systems from Kant's, who does not predicate even an 
existence in space and time of things in themselves, to Locke's, 
who supposes the transcendent reality to resemble its idea, at least 
in the primary qualities.) Now, the latter alternative is an affir- 
mation of absolute Idealism ; we have, therefore, at present only 
to consider the former. And here, the mind either knows the 
reality of what it represents, or it does not. — On the prior alter- 
native, the hypothesis under discussion would annihilate itself, in 
annihilating the ground of its utility. For as the end of repre- 
sentation is knowledge ; and as the hypothesis of a representative 
perception is only required on the supposed impossibility of that 
presentative knowledge of external things, which consciousness 
affirms : — if the mind is admitted to be cognisant of the outer 
reality in itself, previous to representation, the end towards which 
the hypothesis was devised as a mean, has been already accom- 
plished ; and the possibility of an intuitive perception, as given 
in consciousness, is allowed. Nor is the hypothesis only absurd, 
as superfluous. It is worse. For the mind would, in this case, 
be supposed to know before it knew ; or, like the crazy Pentheus, 
to see its objects double, — 

(" Et soleni geminura et duplices se ostendere Thebas ") : 
and, if these absurdities be eschewed, then is the identity of mind 
and self, — of consciousness and knowledge, abolished ; and my 
intellect knows, what i~ am not conscious of it knowing ! — The 
other alternative remains : — that the mind is blindly determined 
to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which it does not 
know. And here the mind either blindly determines itself, or is 
blindly determined by an extrinsic and intelligent cause. — The 
former lemma is the more philosophical, in so far as it assumes 
nothing hyperphysical ; but it is otherwise utterly irrational, in 

E 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

as much as it would explain an effect, by a cause wholly inade- 
quate to its production. On this alternative, knowledge is sup- 
posed to be the effect of ignorance,— intelligence of stupidity, — 
life of death. We are necessarily ignorant, ultimately at least, of 
the mode in which causation operates ; but we know at least, that 
no effect arises without a cause — and a cause proportionate to its 
existence. — The absurdity of this supposition has accordingly 
constrained the profoundest cosmothetic idealists, notwithstanding 
their rational abhorrence of a supernatural assumption, to em- 
brace the second alternative. To say nothing of less illustrious 
schemes, the systems of Divine Assistance, of a Pre-established 
Harmony, and of the Vision of all things in the Deity, are only 
so many subsidiary hypotheses, — so many attempts to bridge, by 
supernatural machinery, the chasm between the representation 
and the reality, which all human ingenuity had found, by natural 
means, to be insuperable. The hypothesis of a representative 
perception, thus presupposes a miracle to let it work. Dr Brown, 
indeed, rejects as unphilosophical, those hypcrphysical subsidies. 
But he only saw less clearly than their illustrious authors, the 
necessity which required them. It is a poor philosophy that 
eschews the Deus ex machina, and yet ties the knot which is only 
soluble by his interposition. It is not unphilosophical to assume 
a miracle, if a miracle be necessary ; but it is unphilosophical to 
originate the necessity itself. And here the hypothetical realist 
cannot pretend, that the difficulty is of nature's, not of his creation. 
In fact it only arises, because he has closed his eyes upon the light 
of nature, and refused the guidance of consciousness : but having 
swamped himself in following the ignis fatuus of a theory, he has 
no right to refer its private absurdities to the imbecility of human 
reason ; or to generalise his own factitious ignorance, by a Quan- 
tum est quod nescimus ! The difficulty of the problem Dr Brown 
has not perceived ; or perceiving, has not ventured to state, — far 
less attempted to remove. He has essayed, indeed, to cut the 
knot, which he was unable to loose; but we shall find, in the 
sequel, that his summary postulate of the reality of an external 
world, on the ground of our belief in its existence, is, in his hands, 
of all unfortunate attempts, perhaps the most unsuccessful. 

The scheme of Natural Realism (which it is Reid's honour to 
have been the first, among not forgotten philosophers, virtually 
and intentionally, at least, to embrace) is thus the only system, on 
which the truth of consciousness and the possibility of knowledge 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 67 

can be vindicated ; whilst the Hypothetical Realist, in his effort 
to be " wise above knowledge," like the dog in the fable, loses 
the substance, in attempting to realize the shadow. " Les hom- 
ines," (says Leibnitz, with a truth of which he was not himself 
aware,) — " les hommes cherchent ce qu'ils savent, et ne savent pas 
ce qu'ils cherchent." 

That the doctrine of an intuitive perception is not without its 
difficulties, we allow. But these do not affect its possibility ; and 
may in a great measure be removed by a more sedulous examina- 
tion of the phsenomena. The distinction of perception proper 
from sensation proper, in other words, of the objective from the 
subjective in this act, Reid, after other philosophers, has already 
turned to good account ; but his analysis would have been still 
more successful, had he discovered the law which universally 
governs their manifestation: — That Perception and Sensation, 
the objective and subjective, though both always co-existent, are 
always in the inverse ratio of each other. But on this matter we 
cannot at present enter. [See Diss. p. 876-885.] 

Dr Brown is not only wrong in regard to Reid's own doctrine ; 
he is wrong, even admitting his interpretation of that philosopher 
to be true, in charging him with a " series of wonderful miscon- 
ceptions," in regard to the opinions universally prevalent touching 
the nature of ideas. We shall not argue the case upon the higher 
ground, that Reid, as a natural realist, could not he philosophically 
out, in assailing the hypothesis of a representative perception, 
even though one of its subordinate modifications might be mis- 
taken by him for another ; but shall prove that, supposing Reid 
to have been like Brown, an hypothetical realist, under the third 
form of a representative perception, he was not historically wrong- 
in attributing to philosophers in general, (at least, after the decline 
of the Scholastic philosophy,) the first or second variety of the 
hypothesis. Even on this lower ground, Brown is fated to be 
unsuccessful ; and if Reid be not always correct, his antagonist 
has failed in convicting him even of a single inaccuracy. We shall 
consider Brown's charge of misrepresentation in detail. 

It is always unlucky to stumble on the threshold. The para- 
graph (Lect. xxvii.) in which Dr Brown opens his attack on Reid, 
contains more mistakes than sentences ; and the etymological dis- 
cussion it involves, supposes as true, what is not simply false, but 
diametrically opposite to the truth. — Among other errors : — In the 
first place, the term " idea" was never employed in any system, 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

previous to the age of Descartes, to denote " little images derived 
from objects without." In the second, it was never used in any 
philosophy, prior to the same period, to signify the immediate 
object of perception. In the third, it was not applied by the 
" Peripatetics or Schoolmen," to express an object of human 
thought at all.* In the fourth, ideas (taking this term for species) 

* The history of the word idea seems completely unknown. Previous to 
the age of Descartes, as a philosophical term, it was employed exclusively 
by the Platonists, — at least exclusively in a Platonic meaning ; and this 
meaning was precisely the reverse of that attributed to the word by Dr 
Brown ; — the idea was not an object of perception, — the idea teas not derived 
from without. — In the schools, so far from being a current psychological 
expression, as he imagines, it had no other application than a theological. 
Neither, after the revival of letters, was the term extended hy the Aristo- 
telians even to the objects of intellect. Melanclitkon, indeed (who was a 
kind of semi Platonist) uses it on one occasion as a synonyme for notion, or 
intelligible species (He Anima, p. 187, ed. 1555); but it was even to this 
solitary instance, we presume, that Julius Scaligcr alludes (De Subtilitate, 
vi. -1 ), when he castigates such an application of the word as neoteric and 
abusive. " Mefanch." is on the margin. Goclenius also probably founded 
his usage on Mclanchthon. — We should have distinctly said, that previous 
to its employment by Descartes himself the expression had never been used 
as a comprehensive term for the immediate objects of thought, had we not 
in remembrance the Historia Animce Humance of our countryman David 
Buchanan. This work, originally writteu in French, had for some years 
been privately circulated previous to its publication at Paris in 1636. Here 
we rind the word idea familiarly employed, in its most extensive significa- 
tion, to express the objects, not only of intellect proper, but of memory, 
imagination, sense ; and this is the earliest example of such an employment. 
For the Discourse on Method in which the term is usurped by Descartes in 
an equal latitude, was at least a year later in its publication— viz. in June 
1637. Adopted soon after also by Gassendi, the word under such imposing 
patronage gradually Avon its way into general use. In England, however, 
Locke may be said to have been the first who naturalized the term in its 
Cartesian universality. Hobbes employs it, and that historically, only once 
or twice; Henry More and Cudworth are very chary of it, even when treat- 
ing of the Cartesian philosophy ; Willis rarely uses it ; while Lord Herbert, 
Reynolds, and the English philosophers in general, between Descartes and 
Locke, do not apply it psychologically at all. When in common language 
employed by Milton and Dryden, after Descartes, as before him, by Sidney, 
Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, &c. the meaning is Platonic. Our Lexico- 
graphers are ignorant of the difference. 

The fortune of this word is curious. Employed by Plato to express the 
real forms of the intelligible world, in lofty contrast to the unreal images of 
the sensible ; it was lowered by Descartes, who extended it to the objects of 
our consciousness in general. When, after Gassendi, the school of Condillac 
had analyzed our highest faculties into our lowest, the idea was still more 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 69 

were not " in all the dark ages of the scholastic followers of 
Aristotle," regarded as " little images derived from without;" for a 
numerous party of the most illustrious schoolmen rejected species, 
not only in the intellect, but in the sense. In the fifth, ^phan- 
tasm " in " the old philosophy," was not the " external cause of 
perception" but the internal object of imagination. In the sixth, 
the term " shadowy film " which here and elsewhere he con- 
stantly uses, shows that Dr Brown confounds the matterless spe- 
cies of the Peripatetics with the corporeal effluxions of Democritus 
and Epicurus : — 

" Quae, quasi membrance, summo de cortice rerum 
Derepta3, volitant ultro citroque per auras." 

Dr Brown, in short, only fails in victoriously establishing against 
Reid the various meanings in which " the old writers " employed 
the term idea, by the petty fact, — that the old writers did not 
employ the term idea at all. 

Nor does the progress of the attack belie the omen of its out- 
set. We shall consider the philosophers quoted by Brown in 
chronological order. Of three of these only, (Descartes, Arnauld, 
Locke,) were the opinions particularly noticed by Reid ; the 
others, (Hobbes, Le Clerc, Crousaz,) Brown adduces as examples 
of Reid's general misrepresentation. Of the greater number of 
the philosophers specially criticised by Reid, Brown prudently 
says nothing. 

Of these, the first is Descartes ; and in regard to him, Dr 
Brown, not content with accusing Reid of simple ignorance, 
contends, " that the opinions of Descartes are precisely' opposite 
to the representations which he has given of them." (Lect. xxvii. 
p. 172.) — Now Reid states, in regard to Descartes, that this 
philosopher appears to place the idea or representative object in 
perception, sometimes in the mind, and sometimes in the brain ; 
and he acknowledges that while these opinions seem to him con- 
tradictory, he is not prepared to pronounce which of them their 



deeply degraded from its high original. Like a fallen angel, it was relegated 
from the sphere of divine intelligence, to the atmosphere of human sense ; till 
at last Ideologie (more correctly Idealogie), a word which could only properly 
suggest an a priori scheme, deducing our knowledge from the intellect, has 
in France become the name peculiarly distinctive of that philosophy of mind 
which exclusively derives our knowledge from the senses. — Word and thing, 
ideas have been the crux philosophorum, since Aristotle sent them packing 
(xouzsraaoc!/ Mui) to the present day. 



70 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

author held, if he did not indeed hold both together. " Des- 
cartes," he says, " seems to have hesitated between the two 
opinions, or to have passed from one to the other." On any 
alternative, however, Reid attributes to Descartes, either the first 
or the second form of representation. Now here we must recol- 
lect, that the question is not whether Reid be rigorously right, 
but whether he be inexcusably ivrong. Dr Brown accuses him of 
the most ignorant misrepresentation, — of interpreting an author, 
whose perspicuity he himself admits, in a sense " exactly the 
reverse " of truth. To determine what Descartes' doctrine of 
perception actually is, would be difficult, perhaps even impossible ; 
but in reference to the question at issue, certainly superfluous. 
It here suffices to show, that his opinion on this point is one 
mooted among his disciples ; and that Brown, wholly unacquaint- 
ed with the difficulties of the question, dogmatizes on the basis of 
a single passage — nay, of a passage in itself irrelevant. 

Reid is justified against Brown, if the Cartesian Idea be proved, 
either a material image in the brain, or an immaterial representa- 
tion in the mind, distinct from the percipient act. By those not 
possessed of the key to the Cartesian theory, there are many pass- 
ages * in the writings of its author, which, taken by themselves, 
might naturally be construed to import, that Descartes supposed 
the mind to be conscious of certain motions in the brain, to which, 
as well as to the modifications of the intellect itself he applies the 
terms image and idea. Reid, who did not understand the Carte- 
sian philosophy as a system, was puzzled by these superficial am- 
biguities. Not aware that the cardinal point of that system is, — 
that mind and body, as essentially opposed, are naturally to each 
other as zero, and that their mutual intercourse can only be 
supernaturally maintained by the concourse of the Deity ; f Reid 

* Ex. gr. De Pass. § 35, — a passage stronger than any of those noticed by 
De la Forge. 

f That the theory of Occasional Causes is necessarily involved in Descartes' 
doctrine of Assistance, and that his explanation of the connexion of mind 
and body reposes on that theory, it is impossible to doubt. For while he 
rejects all physical iofluence in the communication and conservation of mo- 
tion between bodies, which he refers exclusively to the ordinary concourse 
of God, (Princ. P. II. Art. 36 etc.) ; consequently, he deprives conflicting 
bodies of all proper efficiency, and reduces them to the mere occasional 
causes of this phenomenon. But a fortiori, he must postulate the hypothesis, 
which he found necessary in explaining the intercourse of things substantially 
the same, to account for the reciprocal action of two substances, to him, of 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 71 

attributed to Descartes the possible opinion, that the soul is 
immediately cognisant of material images in the brain. But in 
the Cartesian theory, mind is only conscious of itself; the affec- 
tions of body may, by the law of union, be the proximate occa- 
sions, but can never constitute the immediate objects, of knowledge. 
Reid, however, supposing that nothing could obtain the name of 
image, which did not represent a prototype, or the name of idea 
which was not an object of thought, thus misinterpreted Des- 
cartes ; who applies, abusively indeed, these terms to the occasion 
of perception, (i. e. the motion in the sensorium, unknown in itself 
and resembling nothing), as well as to the object of thought, (i. e. 
the representation of which we are conscious in the mind itself.) 
In the Leibnitio-Wolfian system, two elements, both also deno- 
minated ideas, are in like manner accurately to be contra-distin- 
guished in the process of perception. The idea in the brain, and 
the idea in the mind, are, to Descartes, precisely what the " ma- 
terial idea," and the " sensual idea," are to the Wolfians. In 
both philosophies, the two ideas are harmonic modifications, cor- 
relative and co-existent ; but in neither, is the organic affection or 
material idea an object of consciousness. It is merely the unknown 
and arbitrary condition of the mental representation ; and in the 
hypotheses both of Assistance and of Pre-established Harmony, 
the presence of the one idea implies the concomitance of the other, 
only by virtue of the hyperphysical determination. Had Reid, 
in fact, not limited his study of the Cartesian system to the wri- 
tings of its founder, the twofold application of the term idea, by 
Descartes, could never have seduced him into the belief, that so 
monstrous a solecism had been committed by that illustrious 
thinker. By De la Forge, the personal friend of Descartes, the 
verbal ambiguity is, indeed, not only noticed, but removed ; and 
that admirable expositor applies the term " corporeal species" to 
the affection in the brain, and the terms " idea," " intellectual 
notion," to the spiritual representation in the conscious mind. — 
(De V Esprit, c. ] 0.) 

But if Reid be wrong in his supposition, that Descartes admit- 
so incompatible a nature, as mind and body. De la Forge, Geulinx, Mal- 
lebranche, Cordemoi, and other disciples of Descartes, only explicitly evolve 
what the writings of their master implicitly contain. We may observe, 
though we cannnot stop to prove, that Tennemann is wrong in denying De 
la Forge to be even an advocate, far less the first articulate expositor, of the 
doctrine of Occasional Causes. • 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

ted a consciousness of ideas in the brain;* is lie on the other alter- 
native wrong, and inexcusably wrong, in holding that Descartes 
supposed ideas in the mind, not identical with their perceptions f 
Mallebranche, the most illustrious name in the school after its 
founder, (and who, not certainly with less ability, may be suppo- 
sed to have studied the writings of his master, with far greater 
attention than either Reid or Brown,) ridicules, as " contrary to 
common sense and justice" the supposition that Descartes had 
rejected ideas in " the ordinary acceptation," and adopted the 
hypothesis of their being representations, not really distinct from 
their perception. And while " he is as certain as he possibly can 
be in such matters," that Descartes had not dissented from the 
general opinion, he taunts Arnauld with resting his paradoxical 
interpretation of that philosopher's doctrine " not on any passages 
of his Metaphysic contrary to the common opinion" but on his 
own arbitrary limitation of " the ambiguous term perception" 
{Rep. au Livre des Idees, passim; Arnauld, (Euv. xxxviii. pp. 
388, 389.) That ideas are "found in the mind, not formed by it," 
and consequently, that in the act of knowledge the representation 
is really distinct from the cognition proper, is strenuously asserted 
as the doctrine of his master by the Cartesian Roell, in the contro- 
versy he maintained with the Anti-Cartesian De Vries. (Roelli 
Dispp. ; De Vries De Ideis innatis.) — But it is idle to multiply 
proofs. Brown's charge of ignorance falls back upon himself ; 
and Reid may lightly bear the reproach of " exactly reversing" 
the notorious doctrine of Descartes, when thus borne, along with 
him, by the profoundest of that philosopher's disciples. 

Had Brown been aware, that the point at issue between him 
and Reid, was one agitated among the followers of Descartes 
themselves, he could hardly have dreamt of summarily deter- 
mining the question by the production of one vulgar passage 
from tne writings of that philosopher. But we are sorely puzzled 
to account for his hallucination, in considering this passage per- 
tinent. Its substance is fully given by Reid in his exposition of 
the Cartesian doctrine. Every iota it contains, of any relevancy, 
is adopted by Mallebranche ; — constitutes, less precisely indeed, 
his famous distinction of perception (idee) from sensation (senti- 



* Keid's error on this point is however surpassed by that of M. Eoyer- 
Collard, who represents the idea in the Cartesian doctrine of perception as 
exclusively situate in the brain — {CEuvres de Reid, III. p. 334). 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 73 

ment) : and. Mallebranche is one of the two modern philosophers, 
admitted by Brown to have held the hypothesis of representation 
in its first, and, as he says, its most " erroneous" form. But 
principles that coalesce, even with the hypothesis of ideas distinct 
from mind, are not, a fortiori, incompatible with the hypothesis, 
of ideas distinct only from the perceptive act. — We cannot, how- 
ever, enter on an articulate exposition of its irrelevancy. 

To adduce Hobbes, as an instance of Reid's misrepresentation 
of the " common doctrine of ideas," betrays, on the part of Brown, 
a total misapprehension of the conditions of the question ; — or he 
forgets that Hobbes was a materialist. — The doctrine of represen- 
tation, under all its modifications, is properly subordinate to the 
doctrine of a spiritual principle of thought ; and on the supposi- 
tion, all but universally admitted among philosophers, that the 
relation of knowledge implied the analogy of existence, it was 
mainly devised to explain the possibility of a knowledge by an 
immaterial subject, of an existence so disproportioned to its nature, 
as the qualities of a material object. Contending, that an imme- 
diate cognition of the accidents of matter, infers an essential iden- 
tity of matter and mind, Brown himself admits, that the hypothesis 
of representation belongs exclusively to the doctrine of dualism 
(Lect. xxv. pp. 159, 160) ; whilst Reid, assailing the hypothesis 
of ideas, only as subverting the reality of matter, could hardly 
regard it as parcel of that scheme, which acknowledges the reality 
of nothing else. — But though Hobbes cannot be adduced as a 
competent witness against Reid, he is however valid evidence 
against Brown. Hobbes, though a materialist, admitted no 
knowledge of an external world. Like his friend Sorbiere, he 
was a kind of material idealist. According to him, we know 
nothing of the qualities or existence of any outward reality. All 
that we know is the " seeming," the " apparition," the " aspect," 
the "phenomenon," the "phantasm," within ourselves; and this 
subjective object, of which we are conscious, and which is con- 
sciousness itself, is nothing more than the " agitation " of our 
internal organism, determined by the unknown " motions," which 
are supposed, in like manner, to constitute the world without. 
Perception he reduces to sensation. Memory and imagination 
are faculties specifically identical with sense, differing from it 
simply in the degree of their vivacity ; and this difference of 
intensity, with Hobbes as with Hume, is the only discrimination 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

between our dreaming and our waking thoughts. — A doctrine of 
perception identical with Reid's ! 

In regard to Arnauld, the question is not, as in relation to the 
others, whether Reid conceives him to maintain a form of the 
ideal theory which he rejects, but whether Reid admits Amauld's 
opinion on perception and his own to be identical. — " To these 
authors," says Dr Brown, " whose opinions, on the subject of 
perception, Dr Reid has misconceived, I may add one, whom 
even he himself allows to have shaken off the ideal system, 
and to have considered the idea and the perception, as not 
distinct, but the same, a modification of the mind and nothing 
more. I allude to the celebrated Jansenist writer, Arnauld, 
who maintains this doctrine as expressly as Dr Reid himself, 
and makes it the foundation of his argument in his con- 
troversy with Mallebranche." (Lecture xxvii. p. 173.) — If 
this statement be not untrue, then is Dr Brown's interpreta- 
tion of Reid himself correct. A representative perception, under 
its third and simplest modification, is held by Arnauld as by 
Brown ; and his exposition is so clear and articulate, that all 
essential misconception of his doctrine is precluded. In these 
circumstances, if Reid avow the identity of Arnauld's opinion and 
his own, this avowal is tantamount to a declaration that his pecu- 
liar doctrine of perception is a scheme of representation ; whereas, 
on the contrary, if he signalise the contrast of their two opinions, 
he clearly evinces the radical antithesis, — and his sense of the 
radical antithesis, — of the doctrine of intuition, to every, even the 
simplest form of the hypothesis of representation. And this last 
he does. 

It cannot be maintained, that Reid admits a philosopher to 
hold an opinion convertible with his, whom he states : — " to profess 
the doctrine, universally received, that we perceive not material 
things immediately, — that it is their ideas, which are the immediate 
objects of our thoughts, — and that it is in the idea of every thing, 
that ive perceive its properties." This fundamental contrast being 
established, we may safely allow, that the radical misconception, 
which caused Reid to overlook the difference of our presentative 
and representative faculties, caused him likewise to believe, that 
Arnauld had attempted to unite two contradictory theories of 
perception. Not aware, that it was possible to maintain a doctrine 
of perception, in which the idea was not really distinguished from 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 75 

its cognition, and yet to hold that the mind had no immediate 
knowledge of external things : Reid supposes, in the first place, 
that Arnauld, in rejecting the hypothesis of ideas, as representa- 
tive entities, really distinct from the contemplative act of percep- 
tion, coincided with himself in viewing the material reality, as 
the immediate object of that act ; and, in the second, that Arnauld 
again deserted this opinion, when, with the philosophers, he main- 
tained, that the idea, or act of the mind representing the external 
reality, and not the external reality itself, was the immediate 
object of perception. But Arnauld's theory is one and indivi- 
sible ; and, as such, no part of it is identical with Reid's. Reid's 
confusion, here as elsewhere, is explained by the circumstance, 
that he had never speculatively conceived the possibility of the 
simplest modification of the representative hypothesis. He saw 
no medium between rejecting ideas as something different from 
thought, and the doctrine of an immediate knowledge of the 
material object. IS either does Arnauld, as Reid supposes, ever 
assert against Mallebranche, " that we perceive external things 
immediately," that is, in themselves.* Maintaining that all our 
perceptions are modifications essentially representative, Arnauld 
everywhere avows, that he denies ideas, only as existences distinct 
from the act itself of perception.f 

Reid was therefore wrong, and did Arnauld less than justice, in 
viewing his theory " as a weak attempt to reconcile two inconsis- 
tent doctrines : " he was wrong, and did Arnauld more than 
justice, in supposing, that one of these doctrines is not incompa- 
tible with his own. The detection, however, of this error only 
tends to manifest more clearly, how just, even when under its 
influence, was Reid's appreciation of the contrast, subsisting 
between his own and Arnauld's opinion, considered as a whole ; 

* This is perfectly clear from Arnauld's own uniform statements ; and it 
is justly observed by Mallebranche. in his Reply to the Treatise On True and 
false Ideas, (p. 123, orig. edit.) — that, " in reality, according to M. Arnauld, 
we do not perceive bodies, we perceive only ourselves." 

f Oeuvres t. xxxviii. pp. 187, 198, 199, 389. et passim. It is to be recol- 
lected that Descartes, Mallebranche, Arnauld, Locke, and philosophers in 
general before Reid, employed the term Perception as co- extensive with Con- 
sciousness. — By Leibnitz, Wolf, and their followers, it was used in a peculiar 
sense, — as equivalent to Representation or Idea proper, and as contradis- 
tinguished from Apperception, or consciousness. Reid's limitation of the 
term, though the grounds on which it is defended are not of the strongest, is 
convenient, and has been very generally admitted. 



76 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

and exposes more glaringly Brown's general misconception of 
Reid's philosophy, and his present gross misrepresentation, in 
affirming that the doctrines of the two philosophers were identi- 
cal, and by Reid admitted to be the same. 

Nor is Dr Brown more successful in his defence of Locke. 

Supposing always, that ideas were held to be something dis- 
tinct from their cognition, Reid states it, as that philosopher's 
opinion, " that images of external objects were conveyed to the 
brain ; but whether he thought with Descartes [erratum for Dr 
Clarke ?] and Newton, that the images in the brain are perceived 
by the mind, there present, or that they are imprinted on the 
mind itself, is not so evident." This, Dr Brown, nor is he origi- 
nal in the assertion, pronounces a flagrant misrepresentation. 
Not only docs he maintain, that Locke never conceived the idea 
to be substantially different from the mind, as a material image 
in the brain ; but, that he never supposed it to have an existence 
apart from the mental energy of which it is the object. Locke, 
he asserts, like Arnauld, considered the idea perceived and the 
percipient act, to constitute the same indivisible modification of 
the conscious mind. We shall see. 

In his language, Locke is, of all philosophers, the most figura- 
tive, ambiguous, vacillating, various, and even contradictory ; — as 
has been noticed by Reid, and Stewart, and Brown himself, — 
indeed, we believe, by every author who has had occasion to 
comment on this philosopher. The opinions of such a writer are 
not, therefore, to be assumed from isolated and casual expres- 
sions, which themselves require to be interpreted on the general 
analogy of his system ; and yet this is the only ground on which 
Dr Brown attempts to establish his conclusions. Thus, on the 
matter under discussion, though really distinguishing, Locke ver- 
bally confounds, the objects of sense and of intellect, — the opera- 
tion and its object, — the objects immediate and mediate, — the 
object and its relations, — the images of fancy and the notions of 
the understanding. Consciousness is converted with Perception, 
— Perception with Idea, — Idea with Ideatum, and with Notion, 
Conception, Phantasm, Representation. Sense, Meaning, &c. 
Now, his language identifying ideas and perceptions, appears 
conformable to a disciple of Arnauld ; and now it proclaims him 
a follower of Digby, — explaining ideas by mechanical impulse, 
and the propagation of material particles from the external reality 
to the brain. The idea would seem, in one passage, an organic 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 77 

affection, — the mere occasion of a spiritual representation; in 
another, a representative image, in the brain itself. In employ- 
ing thus indifferently the language of every hypothesis, may we 
not suspect, that he was anxious to be made responsible for 
none ? One, however, he has formally rejected : and that is the 
very opinion attributed to him by Dr Brown, — that the idea, or 
object of consciousness in perception, is only a modification of the 
mind itself. 

We do not deny, that Locke occasionally employs expressions, 
which, in a writer of more considerate language, would imply the 
identity of ideas with the act of knowledge ; and, under the 
circumstances, we should have considered suspense more rational 
than a dogmatic confidence in any conclusion, did not the follow- 
ing passage, which has never, we believe, been noticed, appear a 
positive and explicit contradiction of Dr Brown's interpretation. 
It is from Locke's Examination of Mallebranche's Opinion, 
which, as subsequent to the publication of the Essay, must be 
held authentic, in relation to the doctrines of that work. At the 
same time, the statement is articulate and precise, and possesses 
all the authority of one cautiously made in the course of a pole- 
mical discussion. Mallebranche coincided with Arnauld, and 
consequently with Locke, as interpreted by Broivn, to the extent 
of supposing, that sensation proper is nothing but a state or modi- 
fication of the mind itself; and Locke had thus the opportunity 
of expressing, in regard to this opinion, his agreement or dissent. 
An acquiescence in the doctrine, that the secondary qualities, of 
which we are conscious in sensation, are merely mental states, by 
no means involves an admission that the primary qualities of 
which we are conscious in perception, are nothing more. Malle- 
branche, for example, affirms the one and denies the other. But 
if Locke be found to ridicule, as he does, even the opinion which 
merely reduces the secondary qualities to mental states, a fortiori, 
and this on the principle of his own philosophy, he must be held 
to reject the doctrine, which would reduce not only the non- 
resembling sensations of the secondary, but even the resembling, 
and consequently extended, ideas of the primary qualities of 
matter, to modifications of the immaterial unextended mind. In 
these circumstances, the following passage is superfluously con- 
clusive against Brown, and equally so, whether we coincide or 
not in all the principles it involves. — " But to examine their doc- 
trine of modification a little farther. Different sentiments (sensa- 



78 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

tions) are different modifications of the mind. The mind, or soul, 
that perceives, is one immaterial indivisible substance. Now I see 
the white and black on this paper, I hear one singing in the next 
room, I feel the warmth of the fire I sit by, and I taste an apple 
I am eating, and all this at the same time. Now, I ask, take 
modification for what you please, can the same unextended, indi- 
visible substance have different, nay, inconsistent and opposite (as 
these of white and black must be) modifications at the same time ? 
Or must we suppose distinct parts in an indivisible substance, one for 
black, another for white, and another for red ideas, and so of the 
rest of those infinite sensations, which we have in sorts and degrees ; 
all which we can distinctly perceive, and so are distinct ideas, 
some ivhereof are opposite, as heat and cold, which yet a man 
may feel at the same time ? I was ignorant before, how sensation 
was performed in us : this they call an explanation of it ! Must 
I say now I understand it better ? If this be to cure one's igno- 
rance, it is a very slight disease, and the charm of two or three 
insignificant words will at any time remove it ; probatum est." 
(Sec. 39.) — This passage, as we shall see, is correspondent to the 
doctrine held on this point by Locke's personal friend and philo- 
sophical follower, Le Clerc. (But, what is curious, the supposi- 
tions which Locke here rejects, as incompatible with the spiritua- 
lity of mind, are the very facts, on which Ammonius Hermiae, Phi- 
loponus, and Condillac, among many others, found their proof of 
the immateriality of the thinking subject.) 

But if it be thus evident, that Locke held neither the third 
form of representation, that lent to him by Brown, nor even the 
second; it follows, that Reid did him anything but injustice, in 
supposing him to maintain, that ideas are objects, either in the 
brain, or in the mind itself. Even the more material of these 
alternatives has been the one generally attributed to him by his 
critics,* and the one adopted from him by his disciples.f Nor is 
this to be deemed an opinion too monstrous to be entertained by 
so enlightened a philosopher. It was, as we shall see, the com- 
mon opinion of the age ; the opinion, in particular, held by the 

* To refer only to the first and last of his regular critics : — sec Solid Philo- 
sophy asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists, by J. S. [John Sergeant.] 
Lond. 1697, p. 161, — a very curious book, absolutely, we may say, unknown ; 
and Cousin, Cows de Philosophie, t. ii. 1829 ; pp. 330, 357, 325, 365— the 
most important work on Locke since the Nbuveaux Essais of Leibnitz. 

f Tucker's Light of Nature, i. pp. 15, 18, ed. 2. 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 79 

most illustrious of his countrymen and contemporaries — by New- 
ton, Clarke, Willis, Hook, &c* The English psychologists have 
indeed been generally very mechanical. 

Dr Brown at length proceeds to consummate his imagined vic- 
tory, by " that most decisive evidence, found not in treatises read 
only by a few, but in the popular elementary works of science of 
the time, the general text boohs of schools and colleges." He 
quotes, however, only two : — the Pneumatology of Le Clerc, and 
the Logic of Crousaz. 

" Le Clerc," says Dr Brown, " in his chapter on the nature 
of ideas, gives the history of the opinions of philosophers on this 
subject, and states among them the very doctrine which is most 
forcibly and accurately opposed to the ideal system of perception. 
' Alii putant ideas et perceptiones idearum easdem esse, licet rela- 
tionibus differ ant. Idea, uti censent, proprie ad objectum refer- 
tur, quod mens considerat; — perceptio, vere ad mentem ipsam 
quae percipit : sed duplex ilia relatio ad unam modificationem 
mentis pertinct. Itaque, secundum hosce philosophos, nullae sunt, 
proprie, loquenclo, idea? a mente nostra distinct se.' What is it, I 
may ask, which Dr Reid considers himself as having added to 
this very philosophical view of perception ? and if he added 
nothing, it is surely too much to ascribe to him the merit of 
detecting errors, the counter statement of which had long formed 
a part of the elementary works of the school." 

In the first place, Dr Reid certainly " added " nothing " to 

* On the opinion of Newton and Clarke, see Des Maizeaux's Recueil, i. pp. 
7, 8, 9, 15, 22, 75, 127, 169, &c. — Genovesi notices the crudity of Newton's 
doctrine, " Mentem in cerebro prassidere atque in eo, suo scilicet sensorio, 
rerum imagines cernere." — On Willis, see his work De Anima Brutorum, p. 
64, alibi, ed. 1672. — On Hook, see his Led. on Light, § 7. — We know not 
whether it has been remarked that Locke's doctrine of particles and impulse, 
is precisely that of Sir Kenelm Digby ; and if Locke adopts one part of so 
gross an hypothesis, what is there improbable in his adoption of the other ? — 
that the object of perception is, " a material participation of the bodies that 
work on the outward organs of the senses," (Digby, Treatise of Bodies, c. 
32.) As a specimen of the mechanical explanations of mental phenomena 
then considered satisfactory, we quote Sir Kenelm's theory of memory. — 
" Out of which it folio we th, that the little similitudes which are in the caves 
of the brain, wheeling and swimming about, almost in such sort as you see 
in the washing of currants or rice by the winding about and circular turning 
of the cook's hand, divers sorts of bodies do go their course for a pretty 
while; so that the most ordinary objects cannot but present themselves 
quickly," &c. &c. (ibidem.) 



80 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

this very philosophical view of perception," but he exploded it 
altogether. 

In the second, it is false, either that this doctrine of perception 
" had long formed part of the elementary ivorks of the schools," 
or that Le Clerc affords any countenance to this assertion. On 
the contrary, it is virtually stated by him to be the novel paradox 
of a single philosopher ; nay to carry the blunder to hyperbole, 
it is already, as such a singular opinion, discussed and referred to 
its author by Reid himself Had Dr Brown proceeded from the 
tenth paragraph, which he quotes, to the fourteenth, which he 
could not have read, he would have found, that the passage ex- 
tracted, so far from containing the statement of an old and familiar 
dogma in the schools, was, neither more nor less, than a state- 
ment of the contemporary hypothesis of — Antony Arnauld ! and 
of Antony Arnauld alone ! ! 

In the third place, from the mode in which he cites Le Clerc, 
his silence to the contrary, and the general tenor of his statement, 
Dr Brown would lead us to believe, that Le Clerc himself coincides 
in " this very philosophical view of perception." So far, how- 
ever, from coinciding with Arnauld, he pronounces his opinion to 
be false ; controverts it upon very solid grounds ; and in deliver- 
ing his own doctrine touching ideas, though sufficiently cautious 
in telling us what they are, he has no hesitation in assuring us, 
among other things which they cannot be, that they are not mo- 
difications or essential states of mind. " Non est (idea sc.) modi- 
ficatio aut essentia mentis : nam prseterquam quod sentimus 
ingens esse discrimen inter ideae perceptwnem et sensationem ; quid 
habet mens nostra simile monti, aut innumcris ejusmodi idcis?" 
— (Pneumat. sect. i. c. 5. § 10.) 

On all this no observation of ours can be either so apposite or 
authoritative, as the edifying reflections with which Dr Brown 
himself concludes his vindication of the philosophers against Reid. 
BroAvn's precept is sound, but his example is instructive. One 
word we leave blank, which the reader may himself supply. — 

" That a mind so vigorous as that of Dr should have been 

capable of the series of misconccpt ions which ice Jiave traced, may 
scnn wonderful, and truly is so ; awl equally, or rather still n 
wonderful, is the general admission of his merit in this respect. 
I trust it will impress you with one important lesson — to consult 
the, opinions of authors in their own works, and not in the works of 
those who profess to (/ice a faithful account of them. From my OWH 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 81 

experience I can most truly assure you, that there is scarcely 
an instance in which I have found the view I had received of 
them to be faithful. There is usually something more, or some- 
thing less, which modifies the general result ; and by the various 
additions and subtractions thus made, so much of the spirit of the 
original doctrine is lost, that it may, in some cases, be considered 
as having made a fortunate escape, if it be not at last represented 
as directly opposite to what it is." (Led. xxvii. p. 175.) 

The cause must, therefore, be unconditionally decided in favour 
of Reid, even on that testimony, which Brown triumphantly pro- 
duces in court, as " the most decisive evidence " against him : — 
here then we might close our case. To signalize, however, more 
completely the whole character of the accusation, we shall call a 
few witnesses ; to prove, in fact, nothing more than that Brown's 
own " most decisive evidence " is not less favourable to himself, 
than any other that might be cited from the great majority of the 
learned. 

Mallebranche, in his controversy with Arnauld, everywhere 
assumes the doctrine of ideas, really distinct from their perception, 
to be the one il commonly received ;" nor does his adversary ven- 
ture to dispute the assumption. (Rep. au Livre des Idees. — 
Arnauld, CEuv. t. xxxviii. p. 388.) 

Leibnitz, on the other hand, in answer to Clarke, admits, that 
the crude theory of ideas held by this philosopher, was the com- 
mon. " Je ne demeure point d'aceord des notions vulgaires, 
comme si les Images des choses etoient transportees, par les 
organes, jusqu'a Vame. Cette notion de la Philosophic Vulgaire 
n'est point intelligible, comme les nouveaux Cartesiens Pont assez 
montre. L'on ne sauroit expliquer comment la substance imma- 
terielle est aifectee par la matiere: et soutenir une chose non 
intelligible la-dessus, c'est recourir a la notion scholastique chime- 
rique de je ne sai quelles especes intentionelles inexpliquable, qui 
passent des organes dans Fame." (Opera, II p. 161.) Nor does 
Clarke, in reply, disown this doctrine for himself and others. — 
(Ibid. p. 182 ) 

Brucker, in his Historia Philosophica Doctrinal de Ideis 
(1723), speaks of Arnauld's hypothesis as a " peculiar opinion," 
rejected by " philosophers in general (plerisque eruditis)," and 
as not less untenable than the paradox of Mallebranche. — (P. 
248.) 

Dr Brown is fond of text-books. Did we condescend to those 



82 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

of ordinary authors, we could adduce a cloud of witnesses against 
him. As a sample* we shall quote only three, but these of the 
very highest authority. 

Christian Thomasius, though a reformer of the Peripatetic 
and Cartesian systems, adopted a grosser theory of ideas than 
either. In his Introductio ad Philosophiam aulicam, (1702,) he 
defines thought in general, a mental discourse " about images, by 
the motion of external bodies, and through the organs of sense, 
stamped in the substance of the brain" (c. 3. § 29. See also 
his Inst. Jurispr. Div. L. i. c. 1., and Introd. in Phil, ration. 
c. 3.) 

S'Gravesande, in his Introductio ad Philosophiam, (1736,) 
though professing to leave undetermined, the positive question 
concerning the origin of ideas, and admitting that sensations are 
" nothing more than modifications of the mind itself;" makes no 
scruple, in determining the negative, to dismiss, as absurd, the 
hypothesis, which would reduce sensible ideas to an equal sub- 
jectivity. " Mentem ipsam has Ideas efficere, et sibi ipsi repre- 
sentare res, quarum his solis Ideis cognitionem acquirit, nullo modo 
concipi potest. Nulla inter causam et effectum relatio daretur." 
(§§ 279, 282.)_ 

Genovesi, in his Elementa Metaphysical, (1748.) lays it down 
as a fundamental position of philospohy, that ideas and the act 
cognitive of ideas are distinct (" Prop. ^xxx. Ideal et Percep- 
tiones non videntur esse posse una eademque res ") ; and he ably 
refutes the hypothesis of Arnauld, which he reprobates as a 
paradox, unworthy of that illustrious reasoner. (Pars II. 
p. 140.) 

Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique may be adduced as re- 
presenting the intelligence of the age of Keid himself. " Qu'est 
ce qu'une Idee ? — C'est une Image qui se peint dans mon cerveau. 
— Toutes vos pensees sont done des images? — Assurement," &c. 
(voce Idee.) 

What, in fine, is the doctrine of the two most numerous schools 
of modern philosophy — the Leibnitian and Kantian?* Both 



* Leibnitz; — Opera, Dutensii, ton), it. pp. 21, 23, 33, 214, pars ii. pp. 
137, 145, 146. (Euvres Philos. par Raspe, pp. 66, 67, 74, 96. ets. Wolf ; 
—Psychol Rat. § 10, ets. Psychol. Emp. § 48. Kant— Critik d. r. V. p. 
376. ed. 2. Anthropologic, § 5. With one restriction, Leibnitz's doctrine is 
that of the lower Platonists, who maintained that the sonl actually contains 
representations of every possible substance and event in the world during 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 83 

maintain that the mind involves representations of which it is 
not, and never may be, conscious ; that is, both maintain the 
second form of the hypothesis, and one of the two that Reid 
understood and professedly assailed. [This statement requires 
qualification.] 

In Crousaz, Dr Brown has actually succeeded in finding one 
example (he might have found twenty), of a philosopher, before 
Reid, holding the same theory of ideas with Arnauld and him- 
self.* 

The reader is now in a condition to judge of the correctness 
of Brown's statement, " that with the exception of Mallebranche 
and Berkeley, who had peculiar and very erroneous notions on 
the subject, all the philosophers whom Dr Reid considered him- 
self as opposing," (what ! Newton, Clarke, Hook, Norris, Porter- 
field, &c. ? — these, be it remembered, all severally attacked by 
Reid, Brown has neither ventured to defend, nor to acknowledge 
that he could not,) " would, if they had been questioned by him, 
have admitted, before they heard a single argument on his part, 

the revolution of the great year ; although these cognitive reasons are not 
elicited into consciousness, unless the reality, thus represented, be itself 
brought within the sphere of the sensual organs. (Plotinus, Enn. V. lib. vii. 
cc. 1, 2, 3.) 

* In speaking of this author, Dr Brown, who never loses an opportunity 
to depreciate Reid, goes out of his way to remark, u that precisely the same 
distinction of sensations and perceptions, on which Dr Eeid founds so much, 
is stated and enforced in the different works of this ingenious writer, 1 ' and 
expatiates on this conformity of the two philosophers, as if he deemed its 
detection to be something new and curious. Mr Stewart had already noticed 
it in his Essays. But neither he nor Brown seem to recollect, that Crousaz 
only copies Mallebranche, re et verbis, and that Reid had himself expressly 
assigned to that philosopher the merit of first recognising the distinction. 
This is incorrect. But M. Royer Collard {Reid, (Euvres t. iii. p. 329) is still 
more inaccurate in thinking that Mallebranche and Leibnitz (Leibnitz !) were 
perhaps the only philosophers before Reid, who had discriminated perception 
from sensation. The distinction was established by Des Cartes ; and after 
Mallebranche, but long before Beid, it had become even common ; and so 
far is Leibnitz from having any merit in the matter, his criticism of Malle- 
brauce shows, that with all his learning he was strangely ignorant of a dis- 
crimination then familiar to philosophers in general, which may indeed be 
traced under various appellations to the most ancient times. [A contribu- 
tion towards this history, and a reduction of the qualities of matter to three 
classes, under the names of Primary, Secundo-primary, and Secondary, is 
given in the Supplementary Dissertations appended to Reid's Works (p. 825- 
875.)] 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

that their opinions with respect to ideas were precisely the same as 
his own." (Led. xxvii. p. 174.) 

We have thus vindicated our original assertion : — Brown has 

NOT SUCCEEDED IN CONVICTING REID, EVEN OF A SINGLE ERROR. 

Brown's mistakes regarding the opinions on perception, enter- 
tained by Reid and the philosophers, are perhaps, however, even 
less astonishing, than his total misconception of the purport of 
Hume's reasoning against the existence of matter, and of the 
argument by which Reid invalidates Hume's sceptical conclusion. 
We shall endeavour to reduce the problem to its simplicity. 

Our knowledge rests ultimately on certain facts of conscious- 
ness, which as primitive, and consequently incomprehensible, are 
given less in the form of cognitions than of beliefs. But if con- 
sciousness in its last analysis — in other words, if our primary 
experience, be a faith ; the reality of our knowledge turns on the 
veracity of our constitutive beliefs. As ultimate, the quality of 
these beliefs cannot be inferred ; their truth, however, is in the 
first instance to be presumed. As given and possessed, they must 
stand good until refuted ; " neganti incumbit probatio." It is not 
to be presumed, that Intelligence gratuitously annihilates itself; — 
that Nature operates in vain ; — that the Author of nature creates 
only to deceive. 

" Q?vi[tn VovTrore kolp'kclv oi'nbKKvrau, yurii/cc kocvts; 
Aotol (pYifii^ovor Qsov vv rt earl kou usvtoj." 

But though the truth of our instinctive faiths must in the first 
instance be admitted, their falsehood may subsequently be esta- 
blished : this however only through themselves — only on the 
ground of their reciprocal contradiction. Is this contradiction 
proved, the edifice of our knowledge is undermined ; for " no lie 
is of the truth." Consciousness is to the philosopher, what the 
Bible is to the theologian. Both are professedly revelations of 
divine truth ; both exclusively supply the constitutive principles 
of knowledge, and the regulative principles of its construction. 
To both Ave must resort for elements and for laws. Each may be 
disproved, but disproved only by itself. If one or other reveal 
facts, which, as mutually repugnant, cannot but be false, the 
authenticity of that revelation is invalidated ; and the criticism 
which signalizes this self-refutation, has, in either case, been able 
to convert assurance into scepticism, — tk to turn the truth of God 
into a lie," 

M Et violate Jtdem primam, el oonvellere tota 

Fundaments quibus oixatnr vita tahuqvi " -Luch 



BROWN'S MISCONCEPTION OF SCEPTICISM. 85 

As psychology is only a developed consciousness, that is, a 
scientific evolution of the facts of which consciousness is the gua- 
rantee and revelation : the positive philosopher has thus a primary 
presumption in favour of the elements out of which his system is 
constructed ; whilst the sceptic, or negative philosopher, must be 
content to argue back to the falsehood of these elements, from the 
impossibility which the dogmatist may experience, in combining 
them into the harmony of truth. For truth is one ; and the end 
of philosophy is the intuition of unity. Scepticism is not an ori- 
ginal or independent method ; it is the correlative and consequent 
of dogmatism ; and so far from being an enemy to truth, it arises 
only from a false philosophy, as its indication and its cure. 
." Alte dubitat, qui altius credit" The sceptic must not himself 
establish, but from the dogmatist accept, his principles ; and his 
conclusion is only a reduction of philosophy to zero, on the hypo- 
thesis of the doctrine from which his premises are borrowed. — 
Are the principles which a particular system involves, convicted 
of contradiction; or, are these principles proved repugnant to 
others, which, as facts of consciousness, every positive philosophy 
must admit ; there is established a relative scepticism, or the con- 
clusion, that philosophy, in so far as realised in this system, is 
groundless. — Again, are the principles, which, as facts of conscious- 
ness, philosophy in general must comprehend, found exclusive of 
each other ; there is established an absolute scepticism ; — the im- 
possibility of all philosophy is involved in the negation of the one 
criterion of truth. Our statement may be reduced to a dilemma. 
Either the facts of consciousness can be reconciled, or they cannot. 
If they cannot, knowledge absolutely is impossible, and every 
system of philosophy therefore false. If they can, no system 
which supposes their inconsistency can pretend to truth. 

As a legitimate sceptic, Hume could not assail the foundations 
of knowledge in themselves. His reasoning is from their subse- 
quent contradiction to their original falsehood ; and his premises, 
not established by himself, are accepted only as principles univer- 
sally conceded in the previous schools of philosophy. On the 
assumption, that what was thus unanimously admitted by philo- 
sophers, must be admitted of philosophy itself, his argument 
against the certainty of knowledge was triumphant. — Philosophers 
agreed in rejecting certain primitive beliefs of consciousness as 
false, and in usurping others as true. If consciousness, however, 
were confessed to yield a lying evidence in one particular, it could 



86 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

not be adduced as a credible witness at all : — " Fahus in uno, 
falsus in omnibus." But as the reality of our knowledge neces- 
sarily rests on the assumed veracity of consciousness, it thus rests 
on an assumption implicitly admitted by all systems of philosophy 
to be illegitimate. 

" Faciunt, nee, intelUyendo, ut nihil intelligant !" 

Reid (like Kant) did not dispute Hume's inference, as deduced 
from its antecedents. He allowed his scepticism, as relative, to 
be irrefragable ; and that philosophy could not be saved from 
absolute scepticism, unless his conceded premises could be dis- 
allowed, by refuting the principles universally acknowledged by 
modern philosophers. This he applied himself to do. He sub- 
jected these principles to a new and rigorous criticism. If his 
analysis be correct, (and it was so, at least, in spirit and inten- 
tion), it proved them to be hypotheses, on which the credulous 
sequacity of philosophers, — " philosophorum credula natio " — had 
bestowed the prescriptive authority of self-evident truths ; and 
showed, that where a genuine fact of consciousness had been sur- 
rendered, it had been surrendered in deference to some ground- 
less assumption, which, in reason, it ought to have exploded. 
Philosophy was thus again reconciled with Nature ; consciousness 
was not a bundle of antilogies ; certainty and knowledge were 
not evicted from man. 

All this Dr Brown completely misunderstands. He compre- 
hends neither the reasoning of scepticism, in the hands of Hume, 
nor the argument from common sense, in those of Reid. Retro- 
grading himself to the tenets of that philosophy, whose contra- 
dictions Hume had fairly developed into scepticism, he appeals 
against this conclusion to the argument of common sense ; albeit 
that argument, if true, belies his hypothesis, and it' his hypothesis 
be true, is belied by it. Hume and Reid lie actually represents 
as maintaining precisely the same doctrine, on precisely the same 
grounds; and finds both concurring with himself, in advocating 
that very opinion, which the one had resolved into a negation of 
all knowledge, and the other exploded as a baseless hypothesis. 

Our discussion, at present, is limited to a single question, — to 
the truth or falsehood of consciousness in assuring us of tin 1 reality 
of a material world. In perception, consciousness gii 
ultimate fart, a belief of the knowledge of the existence of something 
different from self As ultimate, this belief cannot ho reduced 
to a higher principle; neither can it be truly analysed into a 



ARGUMENT FROM COMMON SENSE. 87 

double element. We only believe that this something exists, be- 
cause we believe that we know (are conscious of) this something 
as existing; the belief of the existence is necessarily involved in 
the belief of the knowledge of the existence. Both are original, or 
neither. Does consciousness deceive us in the latter, it neces- 
sarily deludes us in the former ; and if the former, though a fact 
of consciousness, be false ; the latter, because a fact of conscious- 
ness, is not true. The beliefs contained in the two propositions : — 

1°, / believe that a material ivorld exists ; 

2°, / believe that I immediately knoiu a material world existing, 
(in other words, / believe that the external reality itself is the 
object of which I am conscious in perception) ; — 
though distinguished by philosophers, are thus virtually identical. 

The belief of an external world, was too powerful, not to com- 
pel an acquiescence in its truth. But the philosophers yielded to 
nature, only in so far as to coincide in the dominant result. They 
falsely discriminated the belief in the existence, from the belief in 
the knowledge. With a few exceptions, they held fast by the truth 
of the first ; but, on grounds to which it is not here necessary 
to advert, they concurred, with singular unanimity, in abjuring 
the second. The object of which we are conscious in perception, 
could only, they explicitly avowed, be a representative image 
present to the mind ; — an image which, they implicitly confessed, 
we are necessitated to regard as identical with the unknown reality 
itself. Man, in short, upon the common doctrine of philosophy, 
was doomed by a perfidious nature to realize the fable of Nar- 
cissus ; he mistakes self for not-self, 

" corpus putat esse quod umbra est." 

To carry these principles to their issue was easy ; and scepti- 
cism in the hands of Hume was the result. The absolute veracity 
of consciousness was invalidated by the falsehood of one of its 
facts; and the belief of the knowledge, assumed to be delusive, 
was even supposed in the belief of the existence, admitted to be 
true. The uncertainty of knowledge in general, and in particu- 
lar, the problematical existence of a material world, were thus 
legitimately established. — To confute this reduction on the con- 
ventional ground of the philosophers, Reid saw to be impossible ; 
and the argument which he opposed, was, in fact, immediately 
subversive of the dogmatic principle, and only mediately of the 
sceptical conclusion. This reasoning was of very ancient appli- 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

cation, and had been even long familiarly known by the name of 
the argument from Common Sense. [See Diss., 742 — 803.] 

To argue from common sense is nothing more than to render 
available the presumption in favour of the original facts of con- 
sciousness, — that what is by nature necessarily believed to be, 
truly is. Aristotle, in whose philosophy this presumption obtained 
the authority of a principle, thus enounces the argument : — 
" What appears to all, that we affirm to be; and he who rejects 
this belief, will, assuredly, advance nothing better worthy of cre- 
dit." (Eth. Nic. L. x. c. 2.) As this argument rests entirely on 
a presumption ; the fundamental condition of its validity is, that 
this presumption be not disproved. The presumption in favour 
of the veracity of consciousness, as we have already shown, is 
redargued by the repugnance of the facts themselves, of which 
consciousness is the complement ; as the truth of all can only be 
vindicated on the truth of each. The argument from common 
sense, therefore postulates, and founds on the assumption — that 

OUR ORIGINAL BELIEFS BE NOT PROVED SELF-CONTRADICTORY. 

The harmony of our primary convictions being supposed, and 
not redargued, the argument from common sense is decisive 
against every deductive inference not in unison with them. For 
as every conclusion is involved in its premises, and as these again 
must ultimately be resolved into some original belief; the conclu- 
sion, if inconsistent with the primary phaenornena of consciousness, 
must, ex hypothesi, be inconsistent with its premises, i. e. be logi- 
cally false. On this ground, our convictions at first hand, peremp- 
torily derogate from our convictions at second. " If we know and 
believe," says Aristotle, " through certain original principles, we 
must know and believe these with paramount certainty, for the 
very reason that we know and believe all else through them;" 
and he elsewhere observes, that our approbation is often rather 
to be accorded to what is revealed by nature as actual, than to 
what can be demonstrated by philosophy as possible : — " U.^oaix^'-' 

" Novimus certissima scientia, et tiamante oonscientia" (to apply 
the language of Augustine, in our acceptation,) is thus a proposi- 

* Jacobi (Werke, II. Vorr. p. 11, cts.) following Fries, places Aristotle at 
the head of that absurd majority of philosophers, who attempt to demon- 

stratr every tiling. This would not have hern more sublimely fa/sc, had it 

been said of the German Plato himself. 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SCEPTIC. 89 

tion, either absolutely true or absolutely false. The argument from 
common sense, if not omnipotent, is powerless : and in the hands 
of a philosopher by whom its postulate cannot be allowed, its em- 
ployment, if not suicidal, is absurd. — This condition of non-con- 
tradiction is unexpressed hy Reid. It might seem to him too evi- 
dently included in the very conception of the argument to require 
enouncement. Dr Brown has proved that he was wrong. Yet 
Reid could hardly have anticipated, that his whole philosophy, in 
relation to the argument of common sense, and that argument 
itself, were so to be mistaken, as to be actually interpreted by 
contraries. — These principles established, we proceed to their appli- 
cation. 

Dr Brown's error, in regard to Reid's doctrine of perception, 
involves the other, touching the relation of that doctrine to Hume's 
sceptical idealism. On the supposition, that Reid views in the 
immediate object of perception a mental modification, and not 
a material quality, Dr Brown is fully warranted in asserting, 
that he left the foundations of idealism, precisely as he found 
them. Let it once be granted, that the object known in percep- 
tion, is not convertible with the reality existing ; idealism re- 
poses in equal security on the hypothesis of a representative per- 
ception, — whether the representative image be a modification of 
consciousness itself, — or "whether it have an existence independ- 
ent either of mind or of the act of thought. The former indeed 
as the simpler basis, would be the more secure ; and, in point of 
fact, the egoistical idealism of Fichte, resting on the third form 
of representation, is less exposed to criticism than the theologi- 
cal idealism of Berkeley, which reposes on the first. Did Brown 
not mistake Reid's doctrine, Reid was certainly absurd in think- 
ing, a refutation of idealism to be involved in his refutation of the 
common theory of perception. So far from blaming Brown, on 
this supposition, for denying to Reid the single merit which that 
philosopher thought peculiarly his own ; we only reproach him 
for leaving, to Reid and to himself, any possible mode of resisting 
the idealist at all. It was a monstrous error to reverse Reid's doc- 
trine of perception ; but a greater still, not to see that this rever- 
sal stultifies the argument from common sense ; and that so far 
from "proceeding on safe ground " in an appeal to our original 
beliefs, Reid would have employed, as Brown has actually done, 
a weapon, harmless to the sceptic, but mortal to himself. 

The belief, says Dr Brown, in the existence of an external 



90 PHILOSOPHY Or PERCEPTION. 

world is irresistible, therefore it is true. On his doctrine of per- 
ception, which he attribute?, also to Reid, this inference is however 
incompetent, because on that doctrine he cannot fulfil the condi- 
tion which the argument implies. / cannot but believe that ma- 
terial tilings exist : — I cannot but believe that the material reality is 
the object immediately known in perception. The former of these 
beliefs, explicitly argues Dr Brown, in defending his system against 
the sceptic, because irresistible, is true. The latter of these beliefs, 
implicitly argues Dr Brown, in establishing his system itself, though 
irresistible is false. And here not only are two primitive beliefs, 
supposed to be repugnant, and consciousness therefore delusive ; 
the very belief which is assumed as true, exists in fact only through 
the other, which, ex hypothesi, is false. Both in reality are one.* 

* This reasoning can only be invalidated either, 1°, By disproving the 
belief itself of the knowledge, as a fact ; or — 2°, By disproving its attribute of 
originality. The latter is impossible ; and if possible would also annihilate 
the originality of the belief of the existence, which is. supposed. The fofmer 
alternative is ridiculous. That we are naturally determined to believe the 
object known in perception, to be the external existence itself, and that it is 
only iir consequence of a supposed philosophical necessity, we subsequently 
endeavour by an artificial abstraction to discriminate these, is admitted even 
by those psychologists, whose doctrine is thereby placed in overt contradic- 
tion to our origiual beliefs. Though perhaps superfluous to allege authorities 
in support of such a point, we refer, however, to the following, which happen 
to occur to our recollection. — Descartes, De Pass. art. 26. — Majllk- 
branche, Rech. I. in. c. 1. — Berkeley, Works, i. p. 216, and quoted by 
Reid, Es. I. P. p. 165.— Hume, Treat. II. N. i. pp. 330.338. 353. 358.361. 
369. orig. ed. — Essays, ii. pp. 154. 157. ed. 1788. — As not generally acces- 
sible, we translate the following extracts. — Schelling {Ideen zu einer Philo- 
sophic der Natur. Einl. p. xix. 1st ed.) — " When (in perception) I represent 
an object, object and representation arc one and the same. And simply in this 
our inability to discriminate the object from the representation during the act, 
lies the conviction which the common sense of mankind (gemeine Yerstand) 
has of the reality of external things, although these become known to it. 
only through representations." (See also p. xxvi.) — We cannot recover, at 
the moment, a passage, to the same effect, in Kant : but the ensuing is the 
testimony of au eminent disciple. — Tbnn em an », {Gesch, d. Phil. II. p. i 
speaking of Plato : * w The illusion that things in themselves an cognisabk 
natural, that we need not marvel if even philosophers have not been able to 
emancipate themselves from the prejudice. The common sense of mankind 
(gemeine Menschenverstand) which remains steadfast within the sphere of ex- 
perience, recognises no distinction between things in themselves [unknown real- 
ity existing] ami phenomena [representation, object known] ; ami the philo- 
sophizing reason, commences therewith its attempl to investigate the foun- 
dations of this knowledge, and to recall itself into Bystem." — See also 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SCEPTIC. 91 

Kant, in whose doctrine as in Brown's the immediate object of 
perception constitutes only a subjective phenomenon, was too 
acute, not to discern that, on this hypothesis, philosophy could not, 
without contradiction, appeal to the evidence of our elementary 
faiths. — " Allowing idealism," he says, " to be as dangerous as it 
truly is, it would still remain a scandal to philosophy and human 
reason in general, to be compelled to accept the existence of ex- 
ternal things on the testimony of mere belief." * 

But Reid is not like Brown, felo de se in his reasoning from our 
natural beliefs; and on his genuine doctrine of perception, the 
argument has a very different tendency. Reid asserts that his 
doctrine of perception is itself a confutation of the ideal system; 
and so, when its imperfections are supplied, it truly is. For it at 
once denies to the sceptic and idealist the premises of their con- 
clusion ; and restores to the realist, in its omnipotence, the argu- 
ment of common sense. The sceptic and idealist can only found 
on the admission, that the object known is not convertible with the 
ideality existing ; and, at the same time, this admission, by placing 
the facts of consciousness in mutual contradiction, denies its postu- 
late to the argument from our beliefs. Reid's analysis therefore 
in its result, — that we have, as we believe we have, an im- 

Jacobi's David Hume, passim, (Werke, ii.) and his Allwills Brief sammlung, 
(Werke, i. p. 119. ets.) Eeid has been already quoted. — [Diss. p. 747, 748 
give other testimonies of a similar purport ] 

* Cr. d. r. V. — Vorr. p. xxxix. Kant's marvellous acuteness did not 
however enable him to bestow on his " Only possible demonstration of the real- 
ity of an external world" (ibid. p. 275, ets.) even a logical necessity; nor 
prevent his transcendental, from being apodeictically resolved (by Jacobi and 
Fichte) into absolute, idealism. In this argument, indeed, he collects more 
in the conclusion, than was contained in the antecedent ; and reaches it by 
a double saltus, overleaping the foundations both of the egoistical and mysti- 
cal idealists. — Though Kant, in the passage quoted above and in other places, 
apparently derides the common sense of mankind, and altogether rejects it 
as a metaphysical principle of truth ; he at last, however, found it necessary 
(in order to save philosophy from the annihilating energy of his Speculative 
Reason) to rest on that very principle of an ultimate belief, (which he had ori- 
ginally spurned as a basis even of a material reality,) the reality of all the 
sublimest objects of our interest — God, Free Will, Immortality, &c. His 
Practical Reason, as far as it extends, is, in truth, only another (and not even 
a better) term for Common Sense. — Fichte, too, escaped the admitted nihilism 
of his speculative philosophy, only by a similar inconsequence in his practi- 
cal.— (See his Bestimmung des Menschen.) " Naturam expellas furca" Sec. 



92 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

MEDIATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MATERIAL REALITY, accomplished 

every thing at once.* 

Dr Brown is not, however, more erroneous in thinking that the 
argument from common sense could be employed by him, than in 
supposing that its legitimacy, as so employed, was admitted by 
Hume. So little did he suspect the futility, in his own hands, of 
this proof, he only regards it as superfluous, if opposed to that phi- 
losopher, who, he thinks, in allowing the belief in the existence of 
matter to be irresistible, allows it to be true. (Lect. xxviii, p. 
176.) Dr Brown has committed, perhaps, more important mis- 
takes than this, in regard to scepticism and to Hume ; — none cer- 
tainly more fundamental. Hume is converted into a dogmatist ; 
the essence of scepticism is misconceived. 

On the hypothesis that our natural beliefs are fallacious, it is 
not for the Pyrrhonist to reject, but to establish their authenti- 
city ; and so far from the admission of their strength being a sur- 
render of his doubt, the very triumph of scepticism consists in 
proving them to be irresistible. By what demonstration is the 
foundation of all certainty and knowledge so effectually subverted, 
as by showing that the principles, which reason constrains us 
speculatively to admit, are contradictory of the facts, which our 
instincts compel us practically to believe ? Our intellectual nature 
is thus seen to be divided against itself; consciousness stands self- 
convicted of delusion. " Surely we have eaten the fruit of lies ! " 

This is the scope of the " Essay on the Academical or Sceptical 
Philosophy," from which Dr Brown quotes. In that essay, pre- 
vious to the quotation, Hume shows, on the admission of philoso- 
phers, that our belief in the knowledge of material things, as im- 
IJossible is false ; and on this admission, he had irresistibly esta- 
blished the speculative absurdity of our belief in the existence of 
an external world. In the passage, on the contrary, which Dr 
Brown partially extracts, lie is showing that this idealism, which 
in theory must be admitted, is in application impossible. Specu- 
lation and practice, nature and philosophy, sense and reason, he- 
lief and knowledge, thus placed in mutual antithesis, give, as their 

* [This is spoken too absolutely. Reid I think was correct in the sim 
of his philosophy ; i>ut in the execution of his purpose he is often at fault, 
often confused, :ni(l sometimes even contradictory. I have endeavoured to 

point out and to correct these Imperfections in the edition which 1 have not 
vet finished of his works.] 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SCEPTIC. 93 

result, the uncertainty of every principle ; and the assertion of 
this uncertainty is — Scepticism. This result is declared even in 
the sentence, with the preliminary clause of which, Dr Brown 
abruptly terminates his quotation. 

But allowing Dr Brown to be correct in transmuting the scep- 
tical nihilist into a dogmatic realist ; he would still be wrong (on 
the supposition that Hume admitted the truth of a belief to be 
convertible with its invincibility) in conceiving, on the one hand, 
that Hume could ever acquiesce in the same inconsequent con- 
clusion with himself; or, on the other, that he himself could, 
without an abandonment of his system, acquiesce in the legitimate 
conclusion. On this supposition, Hume could only have arrived 
at a similar result with Reid ; there is no tenable medium between 
the natural realism of the one and the sceptical nihilism of the 
other. — " Do you follow," says Hume in the same essay, " the 
instincts and propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of 
sense?" — I do, says Dr Brown. (Lect. xxviii. p. 176. alibi.) — 
" But these," continues Hume, " lead you to believe that the very 
perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you dis- 
claim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, 
that the perceptions are only representations of something exter- 
nal?" — It is the vital principle of my system, says Brown, that 
the mind knows nothing beyond its own states (Lectt. passim) ; 
philosophical suicide is not my choice ; I must recall my admis- 
sion, and give the lie to this natural belief., — " You here," pro- 
ceeds Hume, " depart from your natural propensities and more 
obvious sentiments ; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, 
which can never find any convincing argument from experience to 
prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external 
objects." — I allow, says Brown, that the existence of an external 
world cannot be proved by reasoning, and that the sceptical argu- 
ment admits of no logical reply. (Lect. xxviii. p. 175.) — " But" 
(we may suppose Hume to conclude) " as you truly maintain that 
the confutation of scepticism can be attempted only in two ways 
(ibid.), — either by showing that its arguments are inconclusive, or 
by opposing to them, as paramount, the evidence of our natural 
beliefs, — and as you now, voluntarily or by compulsion, abandon 
both; you are confessedly reduced to the dilemma, either of 
acquiescing in the conclusion of the sceptic, or of refusing your 
assent upon no ground whatever. Pyrrhonism or absurdity ? — 
choose your horn." 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

Were the scepticism into which Dr Brown's philosophy is thus 
analysed, confined to the negation of matter, the result would be 
comparatively unimportant. The transcendent reality of an 
outer world, considered absolutely, is to us a matter of supreme 
indifference. It is not the idealism itself that we must deplore ; 
but the mendacity of consciousness which it involves. Conscious- 
ness, once convicted of falsehood, an unconditional scepticism, in 
regard to the character of our intellectual being, is the melan- 
choly, but only rational, result. Any conclusion may now with 
impunity be drawn against the hopes and dignity of human na- 
ture. Our Personality, our Immateriality, our Moral Liberty, have 
no longer an argument for their defence. " Man is the dream of 
a shadow ;" God is the dream of that dream. 

Dr Brown, after the best philosophers, rests the proof of our 
personal identity, and of our mental individuality, on the ground 
of beliefs, which, as " intuitive, universal, immediate, and irre- 
sistible," he not unjustly regards as " the internal and never- 
ceasing voice of our Creator, — revelations from on high, omnipo- 
tent [and veracious] as their author." To him this argument is 
however incompetent, as contradictory. 

What we know of self or person, we know, only as given in 
consciousness. In our perceptive consciousness there is revealed 
as an ultimate fact a self and a not- self ; each given as indepen- 
dent — each known only in antithesis to the other. No belief is 
more " intuitive, universal, immediate, or irresistible, " than that 
this antithesis is real and known to be real ; no belief therefore is 
more true. If the antithesis be illusive, self and not-self, subject 
and object, /and Thou are distinctions without a difference; and 
consciousness, so far from being " the internal voice of our Crea- 
tor," is shown to be, like Satan, " a liar from the beginning." 
The reality of this antithesis in different parts of his philosophy Dr 
Brown affirms and denies, — In establishing his theory of percep- 
tion, he articulately denies, that mind is conscious of aught beyond 
itself; virtually assorts, that what is there given in consciousness 
as not-self, is only a phenomena] illusion, — a modification of self. 
which our consciouness determines us to believe the quality of 
something numerically and substantially different. Like Narcis- 
sus again, ho must lament, — 

" TUe c<i<> sum sensi, sed me mea fallil imago." 
After this implication in one pari of his system that our belief 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SCEPTIC. 95 

in. the distinction of self and not-self is nothing more than the 
deception of a lying consciousness ; it is startling to find him, in 
others, appealing to the beliefs of this same consciousness as to 
" revelations from on high ; " — nay, in an especial manner alleg- 
ing " as the voice of our Creator," this very faith in the dis- 
tinction of self and not-self, through the fallacy of which, and 
of which alone, he had elsewhere argued consciousness of false- 
hood. 

On the veracity of this mendacious belief, Dr Brown establishes 
his proof of our personal identity. (Lect. xii. — xv.) Touching 
the object of perception, when its evidence is inconvenient, this 
belief is quietly passed over as incompetent to distinguish not-self 
from self ; in the question regarding our personal identity, 
where its testimony is convenient, it is clamorously cited as an 
inspired witness, exclusively competent to distinguish self from 
not-self. Yet, why, if, in the one case, it mistook self for not-self 
it may not, in the other, mistake not-self for self, would appear a 
problem not of the easiest solution. 

The same belief, with the same inconsistency, is again called in 
to prove the individuality of mind. (Lect. xcvi.) But if we 
are fallaciously determined, in perception, to believe what is sup- 
posed indivisible, identical, and one, to be plural and different 
and incompatible, (self = self + not-self) ; how, on the authority 
of the same treacherous conviction, dare we maintain, that the 
phcenomenal unity of consciousness affords a guarantee of the real 
simplicity of the thinking principle ? The materialist may now 
contend, without fear of contradiction, that self is only an illusive 
phcenomenon; that our consecutive identity is that of the Delphic 
ship, and our present unity merely that of a system of co-ordinate 
activities. To explain the phenomenon, he has only to suppose, 
as certain theorists have lately done, an organ to tell the lie of 
our personality ; and to quote as authority for the lie itself, the 
perfidy of consciousness, on which the theory of a representative 
perception is founded. « 

On the hypothesis of a representative perception, there is, in 
fact, no salvation from materialism, on the one side, short of 
idealism — scepticism — nihilism, on the other. Our knowledge of 
mind and matter, as substances, is merely relative ; thev are 
known to us only in their qualities ; and we can justify the postu- 
lation of two different substances, exclusively on the supposition of 



96 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

the incompatibility of the double series of phenomena to eoinhere 
in one. Is this supposition disproved ? — the presumption against 
dualism is again decisive. " Entities are not to be multiplied with- 
out necessity;" — "A plurality of principles is not to be assumed where 
the phmnomena can be explained by one." In Brown's theory of per- 
ception, he abolishes the incompatibility of the two series ; and yet 
his argument, as a dualist, for an immaterial principle of thought, 
proceeds on the ground, that this incompatibility subsists. (Lect. 
xcvi. pp. 646, 647.) This philosopher denies us an immediate 
knowledge of aught beyond the accidents of mind. The accidents 
which we refer to body, as known to us, are only states or modi- 
fications of the percipient subject itself; in other words, the qua- 
lities we call material, are known by us to exist, only as they are 
known by us to inhere in the same substance as the qualities we de- 
nominate mental. There is an apparent antithesis, but a real 
identity. On this doctrine, the hypothesis of a double principle 
losing its necessity, becomes philosophically absurd; and on the 
law of parsimony, a psychological unitarianism, at best, is esta- 
blished. To the argument, that the qualities of the object are so 
repugnant to the qualities of the subject of perception, that they 
cannot be supposed the accidents of the same substance ; the uni- 
tarian — whether materialist, idealist, or absolutist — has only to 
reply : that so far from the attributes, of the object, being exclu- 
sive of the attributes of the subject, in this act ; the hypothetical 
dualist himself establishes, as the fundamental axiom of his philo- 
sophy of mind, that the object known is universally identical with 
the subject knowing. The materialist may now derive the subject 
from the object, the idealist derive the object from the subject, the 
absolutist sublimate both into indifference, nay, the nihilist subvert 
the substantial reality of either ; — the hypothetical realist so far 
from being: able to resist the conclusion of any, in tact accords 
their assumptive premises to all. 

The same contradiction would, in like manner, invalidate every 
presumption in favour of our Liberty of Will. But as Dr 
Brown throughout his scheme of Ethics advances no argument in 
support of this condition of our moral being, which his philosophy 
otherwise tends to render impossible, we shall say nothing of this 
consequence of hypothetical realism. 

So much for the system, which its author fondly imagines, 
" allows to the sceptic no rest iu<t-/>!<«r for his foot, — no fulcrum 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SCEPTIC. 97 

for the instrument he uses:" so much for the doctrine which 
Brown would substitute for Reid's ; — nay, which he even supposes 
Reid himself to have maintained. 

" Scilicet, hoc totum falsa ratione receptum est ! " * 

* [In this criticism I have spoken only of Dr Brown's mistakes, and of 
these, only with reference to his attack on Reid. On his appropriating to 
himself the observations of others, and in particular those of Destutt Tracy, 
I have said nothing, though an enumeration of these would be necessary to 
place Brown upon his proper level. That, however, would require a sepa- 
rate discussion.] 



III.-JOHNSOFS TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 
MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



(October, 1832.) 

A Manual of the History of Philosophy ; translated from tlie 
German of Tennemann. By the Rev. Arthur Johnson, 
M.A., late Fellow of Wadham College. 8vo. Oxford : 1832. 

We took up this translation with a certain favourable prepos- 
session, and felt inclined to have said all we conscientiously could 
in its behalf ; but alas ! never were expectations more completely 
disappointed, and we find ourselves constrained exclusively to 
condemn, where we should gladly have been permitted only to 
applaud. 

We were disposed to regard an English version of Tenne- 
mann's minor History of Philosophy — his " Grundriss" as a 
work of no inconsiderable utility — if competently executed : but 
in the present state of philosophical learning in this country we 
were well aware, that few were adequate to the task, and of those 
few we hardly expected that any one would be found so disinte- 
rested, as to devote himself to a labour, of which the credit 
stood almost in an inverse proportion to the trouble. Few 
works, indeed, would prove more difficult to a translator. A 
complete mastery of the two languages, in a philological Bense, 
was not enough. There was required a comprehensive acquaint- 
ance with philosophy in general, and, in particular, an intimate 
knowledge of the philosophy of Kant. Tennemann was a Kan- 
tian ; lie estimates all opinions by a Kantian standard ; and the 
language which he employs is significant only as understood pre- 
cisely in a Kantian application, In stating this, wo have 4 no inten- 
tion of disparaging the intrinsic value of the work, which, in 
truth, with all its defects, we highly esteem as the production of 



TENNEMANN'S MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 99 

a sober, accurate, and learned mind. Every historian of philo- 
sophy must have his system, by reference to which he criticises 
the opinions of other thinkers. Eclecticism, as opposed to syste- 
matic philosophy, is without a meaning. For either the choice of 
doctrines must be determined by some principle, and that prin- 
ciple then constitutes a system ; or the doctrines must be arbitra- 
rily assumed, which would be the negation of philosophy alto- 
gether. (We think therefore, that M. Cousin, in denominating his 
scheme distinctively the eclectic, has committed an act of injustice 
on himself.) But as it was necessary that Tennemann should be 
of some school, — should have certain opinions, — we think it any 
thing but a disadvantage that he was of the Kantian. The Cri- 
tical Philosophy is a comprehensive and liberal doctrine ; and 
whatever difference may subsist with regard to its positive con- 
clusions, it is admitted, on all hands, to constitute, by its negative, 
a great epoch in the history of thought. An acquaintance with 
a system so remarkable in itself, and in its influence so decisive of 
the character of subsequent speculation, is now a matter of neces- 
sity to all who would be supposed to have crossed the threshold 
of philosophy. The translation of a work of merit like the pre- 
sent, ought not therefore to be less acceptable to the English 
reader, because written in the spirit and language of the Kantian 
system ; — provided, he be enabled by the translator to understand 
it. But what does this imply ? Not merely that certain terms 
in the German should be rendered by certain terms in the Eng- 
lish ; for few philosophical words are to be found in the latter, 
which suggest the same analyses and combinations of thought as 
those embodied in the technical vocabulary of the former. The 
language of German philosophy has sometimes three or four 
expressions, precisely distinguishing certain generalizations or 
abstractions ; where we possess only a single word, comprehensive 
of the whole, or, perhaps, several, each vaguely applicable to all 
or any. In these circumstances a direct translation was impos- 
sible. The translator could only succeed by coming to a specific 
understanding with his reader. He behoved, in the first place, 
clearly to determine the value of the principal terms to be ren- 
dered ; which could only be accomplished through a sufficient 
exposition of that philosophy whose peculiar analyses these terms 
adequately expressed. In the second place, it was incumbent on 
him to show in what respects the approximating English term 
was not exactly equivalent to the original ; and precisely to define 



100 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

the amplified or restricted sense, in which, by accommodation to 
the latter, the former was in his translation specially to be under- 
stood. 

At the same time it must be remembered, that the Gmndriss of 
Tennemann was not intended by its author for an independent 
treatise. It is merely a manual or text-book ; that is, an outline 
of statements to be filled up, and fully illustrated in lectures ; — 
a text-book also for the use of students, who, from their country 
and course of education, were already more or less familiar with 
the philosophy of the German schools. In translating this work 
as a system intended to be complete per se, and in favour of a 
public unlearned in philosophical discussion, and utterly ignorant 
of German metaphysics, a competent translator would thus have 
found it necessary, in almost every paragraph, to supply, to 
amplify, and to explain. M. Cousin, indeed, when he condescen- 
ded to translate this work, (we speak only from recollection 
and a rapid glance,) limited himself to a mere translation. But 
by him the treatise was intended to be only subordinate to the 
history of speculation delivered in his lectures ; and was address- 
ed, among his countrymen, to a numerous class of readers, whose 
study of philosophy, and of German philosophy, he had himself 
powerfully contributed to excite. The fact, indeed, of a French 
translation by so able an interpreter, was of itself sufficient to 
render a simple version of the work into another European tongue 
nearly superfluous ; and we were prepared to expect, that, if 
translated into English, something more would be attempted, than 
what had been already so well executed in a language with which 
every student of philosophy is familiar. 

It was, therefore, with considerable interest, that we read the 
announcement of an English translation, by a gentleman distin- 
guished for learning among the Tutors of Oxford ; whose compa- 
rative merit, indeed, had raised him to several of the most 
honourable and important offices in the nomination of the two 
" Venerable Houses." Independently of its utility, we hailed the 
publication as a symptom of the revival, in England, of a taste fop 
philosophical speculation ; and this more especially, as it emanated 
from that University in which, (since its legal constitution had 
been subverted, and all the subjects taught reduced to the capa- 
city of one self-elected teacher.) Psychology and Metaphysics, as 
beyond the average comprehension of the College Fellows, had 
remained not only untaught, hut their study discouraged, it' not 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 101 

formally proscribed. A glance at Mr Johnson's preface confirmed 
us in our prepossessions. We were there, indirectly, indeed, but 
confidently, assured of his intimate acquaintance with philosophy 
in general, and German philosophy in particular ; nor were we 
allowed to remain ignorant of the translator's consciousness that 
he might easily have become the rival of his author. " As far," 
he says, " as it appeared possible, I have preserved the technical 
expressions of my author, subjoining for the most part an expla- 
nation of their meaning, for the benefit of those English readers who 
may not have plunged into the profound abyss of German metaphy- 
sics ; " — the expositor himself having of course so plunged, " When- 
ever," he adds, " it has appeared to me that an observation of my 
author was of a nature impossible to be apprehended by any but 
a scholar long familiar with the disputes of the German lecture- 
rooms, I have endeavoured to express the sense of it in other 
words;" — necessarily implying that the interpreter himself was 
thus familiar. And again : — " There are parts of Tennemann, 
which on this account I had much rather have composed anew 
than translated, particularly the Introduction." 

The examination of a few paragraphs of the work, however, 
proved the folly of our expectations. We found it to be a bare 
translation ; and one concentrating every possible defect. We 
discovered, in the first place, that the translator was but superfi- 
cially versed in the German language ; — in the second, that he was 
wholly ignorant even of the first letter in the alphabet of German 
philosophy ; — in the third, that he was almost equally unac- 
quainted with every other philosophy, ancient and modern ; — in 
the fourth, that he covertly changes every statement of his author 
which he may not like ;— in the fifth, that he silently suppresses 
every section, sentence, clause, word he is suspicious of not under- 
standing ; — and in the sixth, that he reviles, without charity, the 
philosophy and philosophers he is wholly incapable of apprecia- 
ting. — Instead of being of the smallest assistance to the student 
of philosophy, the work is only calculated to impede his progress, 
if not at once to tarn him from the pursuit. From beginning to 
end, all is vague or confused, unintelligible or erroneous. We do 
not mean to insinuate that it was so intended, (albeit the thought 
certainly did strike us,) but, in point of fact, this translation is admi- 
rably calculated to turn all metaphysical speculation into con- 
tempt. From the character of the work, from the celebrity of 
its author and of its French translator, and even from the 



102 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

academical eminence of Mr Johnson himself, his version would 
be probably one of the first books resorted to by the English 
student, for information concerning the nature and progress of 
philosophical opinions. But in proportion as the inquirer were 
capable of thinking, would philosophy, as here delineated, appear 
to him incomprehensible ; and in proportion as he respected his 
source of information, would he either despair of his own capacity 
for the study, or be disgusted with the stutly itself. It is, indeed, 
by reason of the serious injury which this translation might occa- 
sion to the cause of philosophy in this country, that we find it 
imperative on us, by annihilating its authority, to deprive it of 
the power to hurt. 

But let us be equitable to the author while executing justice on 
his w r ork. This translation is by no means to be taken as a test 
of the general talent or accomplishment of the translator. He 
has certainly been imprudent, in venturing on an undertaking, 
for which he was qualified, neither by his studies, nor by the 
character of his mind. That he should ever conceive himself so 
qualified, furnishes only another proof of the present abject state 
of philosophical erudition in this country ; for it is less to be 
ascribed to any overweening presumption in his powers, than to 
the lamentable lowness of the standard by which he rated their 
sufficiency. What Mr Johnson has executed ill, there are prob- 
ably not six individuals in the British empire who could perform 
well. — But to the proof of our assertions. 

That Mr Johnson, though a quondam Professor of ancient 
Saxon, is still an under-graduate in modern German, will, with- 
out special proof, be sufficiently apparent in the course of our 
criticism. 

Of his ignorance of the Kantian philosophy, in the languag 
which the work of Tcnnemann is written, every page of the 
translation bears ample witness. The peculiarities of this lan- 
guage arc not explained ; nay. the most Important sections of the 
original, from which, by a sagacious reader, these might have 
been partially divined, are silently omitted, or professedly sup- 
pressed as unintelligible, I K. g, § 41.) Terms in the original, 
correlative and opposed, are, not only not translated by terms 
also correlative and opposed, hut confounded under the same 
expression, ami. if not rendered at random, translated by the rule 
of contraries. To take, for example, the mental operations ami 
their objects: In a few pages we have examined, we Hud among 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY-. 108 

other errors, Vernunft (Reason), though strictly used in its proper 
signification as opposed to Ver 'stand, rendered sometimes by 
" Reason," but more frequently by " Understanding " or " In- 
tellect ; " and Verstand (Understanding), in like manner, speci- 
ally used in opposition to Vernunft, translated indifferently by 
" Understanding " or " Reason," * Vorstellung (Representation), 
the genus of which Idee, Begriff, Anschauung are species, is 
translated " Perception," " Idea," " Apprehension," " Impres- 
sion," "Thought," " Effort," Sec— Begriff (Notion, Concept), f 
the object of the Understanding, as opposed to Idee (Idea), the 
object of the Reason, is commonly translated " Idea," (and this 
also in treating of the Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies, in 
which this term has a peculiar meaning very different from its 
Cartesian universality,) sometimes " Opinion," "Character;" 
Idee der Vernunft (Idea of Reason) is rendered by " object of 
Understanding," and Zweck der Vernunft, (scope or end of Rea- 
son,) by " mental object;" while Anschauung (immediate object 
of Perception or Imagination) is expressed by " mental Concep- 
tion" " Perception" &c— Yet Mr Johnson professes, " as far as 
it appeared possible, to have preserved the technical expressions 
of his author " ! But of this more in the sequel. 

Of our translator's knowledge of philosophy in general, a speci- 
men may be taken from the few short notes of explanation he has 
appended. These for the most part say, in fact, nothing, or are 
merely an echo of the text ; where they attempt more, they are 
uniformly wrong. Take, for example, the two first. At p. 55, 
on the words Syncretism and Mysticism, we have this luminous 
annotation : " The force of these terms, as used by the author, 
will be sufficiently explained in the course of the work. Transl." 
At p. 70, (and on a false translation,) there is the following note, 
which, though not marked as the translator's, at once indicates its 
source : " Idealism is used to denote the theory which asserts the 
reality of our ideas, J and from these argues the reality of exter- 

* By the time he is half through the work, our translator seems to have 
become aware that the Kantians " make a broad distinction between the 
Understanding and Reason." The discovery, however, had no beneficial 
effect on his translation. 

f It will be seen that we do not employ Conception in the meaning 
attached to it by Mr Stewart. 

t The stoutest sceptic never doubted that we are really conscious of what 
we are conscious, — he never doubted the subjective reality of our ideas : the 
doubt would annihilate itself. 



104 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

nal objects.* Pantheism is the opinion that all nature partakes 
of the divine essence." f — To this head we may refer the author's 
continual translation of Philosophic by " Moral Philosophy," 
which he tells us is convertible with Metaphysics in general ; his 
use of the word " Experimentalism " for Empirism, Philosophy of 
Experience or of Observation ; to say nothing of the incorrect- 
ness and vacillation of his whole technical language criticised by 
any standard. — Under this category may be also mentioned the 
numerous and flagrant errors in philosophical history. For ex- 
ample, Joseph Priestley {als Physiker beruehmte) is called " the 
celebrated Physician;" and Ancillon (pere), thus distinguished 
from his son, the present Prussian prime minister, himself a dis- 
tinguished philosopher, is converted from a Calvinist pastor, to a 
Catholic priest — " Father Ancillon." 

But lest we should be supposed to have selected these defects, 
we shall vindicate the rigid accuracy of our strictures by a few 
extracts. We annex to each paragraph a literal translation, not 
such, assuredly, as we should offer, were we to attempt a com- 
plete version of the original, but such as may best enable the 
English reader to compare Mr Johnson and Tennemann together. 
We find it convenient to make our observations in the form of 
notes : in these we pass over much that is imperfect, and can 
notice only a few of the principal mistakes. We cannot, of course, 
hope to be fully understood except by those who have some 
acquaintance with German philosophy. — We shall first quote 
paragraphs from the Introduction. 

Johnson's Version, § 1. — " A history of philosophy, to be complete,:}: de- 
mands a preliminary enquiry respecting the character of this science, as well 
as respecting its subject-matter, || its form and object ; 1 and also its extent 

* We had always imagined the proving the reality of external objects to 
be the negation of Idealism — Realism. 

f Pantheism, however, is the very denial of such participation ; it asserts 
that u all nature" and the " divine essence 1 ' are not two, one partaking of 
the other, but one and the same. 

X " Complete," inaccurate ; original, Zweckmae&sige. 

|| " Subject-matter;" original, hihult, I, r. contents, the complement of 
objects. Subject or Subject-matter is the materia subjecta or in qua .- and If 
employed for the object, materia objecta or drca quam, is always an abuse of 
philosophical Language, though with us unfortunately a very common one. 
But to commute these terms in the translation of a Kantian Treatise, where 
subject and object, subjective and objective, are accurately contradistinguished, 
and where the distinction forms, in fact, the very cardinal point on which the 
whole philosophy turns, is to convert light into darkness, order into ohlOB. 

f " Object ; M original, Xiree/,\ end, aim, scope. The unphQoSOphictJ 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 105 

or comprehensiveness, its method, its importance, and the different ways in 
which it may be treated. All these particulars, with the bibliography be- 
longing to it, will form, together with some previous observations on the 
progress of philosophical research,* the subject of a general introduc- 
tion." 

Literal Translation, § 1. — " The history of philosophy, if handled in con- 
formity to the end in view, presupposes an inquiry touching the conception 
of the science, conjoining a view of its contents, form, and end, as also of its 
compass, method, importance, and the various modes in which it may be 
treated. These objects, along with the history and literature of the history 
of philosophy, combined with some preparatory observations on the progress 
of the philosophizing reason, afford the contents of a general introduction to 
the history of philosophy." 

Johnson's Version, § 2. — " The human mind has a tendency to attempt 
to enlarge the bounds of its knowledge, and gradually to aspire to a clear 
development of the laws and relations of nature, and of its own operations. f 
At first it does nothing more than obey a blind desire, without accounting 
to itself sufficiently for this instinctive impulse of the understanding,^ and 
without knowing the appropriate means to be employed, or the distance by 
which it is removed from its object. Insensibly this impulse becomes more 
deliberate, and regulates itself in proportion to the progress of the under- 
standing, || which gradually becomes better acquainted with itself. Such a 
deliberate impulse is what we call philosophy, f 

abuse of the term object for end is a comparatively recent innovation in the 
English and French languages. Culpable at all times, on the present occa- 
sion it is equally inexcusable as the preceding. 

* " Philosophic research." The translation is a vague and unmeaning 
version of a precise and significant original— philosophirende Vernunft. 
(See §2.) 

f This sentence is mangled and wholly misunderstood. " The end of 
philosophy," says Trismegistus, " is the intuition of unity ; " and to this ten- 
dency of speculation towards the absolute — to the intensive completion in 
unity, and not to the extensive enlargement to infinity, of our knowledge, 
does Tennemann refer. The latter is not philosophy in his view at all. In 
the translation, Vernunft (Reason), the faculty of the absolute in Kant's 
system, and here used strictly in that sense, is diluted into " Mind ;" and 
the four grand Categories are omitted, according to which reason endeavours 
to carry up the knowledge furnished through the senses and understanding, 
into the unconditioned. 

X "Understanding;" just the reverse — "Reason;" original, Vernunft. 
The author and his translator are in these terms, always at cross-purposes. 
" Instinctive impulse of the understanding" is also wrong in itself, and 
wrong as a translation. The whole sentence, indeed, as will be seen from 
our version, is one tissue of error. 

|| " Understanding;" the same error; " Reason." The whole sentence is 
ill rendered. 

*§ " Philosophy ; " das Philosophiren, not philosophy vaguely, but precisely, 



100 .JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN S 

Literal Translation, § 2. — "Man, through the tendency of his Reason 
(Vernnnft), strives after a systematic completion (Yollendung) of his know- 
ledge considered in Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality, and conse- 
quently endeavours to raise himself to a science of the ultimate principle* and 
/airs of Nature and Liberty, and of their mutual relations. To this he is at 
fust impelled by the blind feeling of a want ; he forms no adequate appre- 
ciation of the problem thus proposed by reason ; and knows not by what 
way, through what means, or to what extent, the end is to be attained. By 
degrees his efforts become more reflective, and this in proportion to the 
dual development of the self- consciousness of reason. This reflective effort 
we denominate the act of philosopliiziiuj." 

Johnson's Version, § 3. — " Thereupon arise various attempts to approxi- 
mate this mental object of the understanding,* attempts more or less differ- 
ing in respect of their principles, their methods, their consequences,! their 
extent, and, in general, their peculiar objects. In all these attempts, (which 
take the name of Philosophic Systems, when they present themselves in a 
scientific form, and the value of which is proportionate to the degree of 
intelligence manifested by each particular philosopher,) we trace the gra- 
dual development of the human understanding,]: according to its peculiar 
laws." 

Literal Translation, § 3. — " Out of this effort arise the various attempts of 
thinkers to approximate to this Idea of reason, or to realize it in thought : 
attempts more or less differing from each other in principle, in method, in 
logical consequence, in result, and in the comprehension and general cha- 
racter of their objects. In these attempts (which, when they present them- 
selves in a form scientifically complete, are denominated philosophic sysU /us. 
and possess a value, varying in proportion to the pitch of intellectual culti- 
vation, and to the point of view of the several speculators) the thinking rea- 
son developes itself in conformity to its peculiar laws." 

Johnson's Version, § 4. — " But the development of human reason is itself 
subject to external conditions, and is sometimes seconded, sometime- 
retarded, or suspended, according to the different impressions it receives 
from without."! 

Literal Translation, § 4. — " But the development of human reason does 
not take place without external excitement; it is consequently dependent 
upon external causes, in as much as its activity through the different 
direction given it from without, is now promoted in its efforts, now cheeked 
and held back." 

Johnson's Version, § 5. — "To give an account of the different works pro- 



philosophic act — philosophizing. — Streben here, and before, is also absurdly 
translated ' l impulse;" a "deliberate impulse!" a round square! 
* "Object of the Understanding;" the opposite again; original, Ideedcr 

1 'i rniinft. 

f '* Consequences ; " wrong ; ( 'onsequenz. 

% u Understanding," usual blunder for Reason, and twice in this §. It is 

BO frequent in the sequel, that we cannot afford to notice it again. The 

whole paragraph is in other respects mutilated, and inaccurately rendered. 
II Mangled and incorrect. 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 107 

duced by the understanding, thus in the progress of improvement, and 
favoured or impeded by external circumstances, is, in fact, to compose a his- 
tory of philosophy."* 

Literal Translation, § 5. — u An account of the manifold efforts made to 
realize that Idea of reason (§ 2) in Matter and Form, (in other words, to 
bring philosophy as a science to bear,) efforts arising from the development 
of reason, and promoted or held in check by external causes- -constitutes, in 
fact, the History of Philosophy." 

Johnson's Version, § 6. — " The subject-matter f of the history of philo- 
sophy, is both external and internal. The internal or immediate embraces, 
1. The efforts continually made by the understanding to attain to a percep- 
tion of the first principles of the great objects of its pursuit, (§ 2,) with 
many incidental details relating to the subject of investigation, the degree of 
ardour or remissness which from time to time have prevailed; with the 
influence of external causes to interest men in such pursuits, or the absence 
of them. % 2. The effects of philosophy, or the views, methods, and systems 
it has originated ; effects varying with the energies out of which they sprang. 
In these we see the understanding avail itself of materials perpetually accu- 
mulating towards constituting philosophy a science, or rules and principles 
for collecting materials to form a scientific whole ; or finally, maxims relat- 
ing to the method to be pursued in such researches. || 3. And lastly: We 
observe the development of the understanding as an instrument of philosophy, 
that is to say, the progress of the understanding towards researches in which 
it depends solely on itself ; in other words, its gradual progress towards the 
highest degree of independence ; a progress which may be observed in indi- 
viduals, in nations, and in the whole race of man."^[ 

Literal Translation, § 6. — " The matter about which the history of philo- 
sophy is conversant, is consequently both internal and external The internal 
or proximate matter, comprehends, in the first place, the continued applica- 
tion of reason to the investigation of the ultimate principles and laws of Na- 
ture and Liberty ; for therein consists the act of philosophising (§ 2). And 
here are to be observed great differences in regard to subject and object — to 
the extensive application and intensive force of the philosophising energy — 
to internal aims and motives (whether generous or interested) — as likewise 
to external causes and occasions. It comprehends, secondly, the products 
of the philosophising act, in other words, philosophic views, methods, and sys- 
tems, (§ 3,) which are as manifold as the efforts out of which they spring. 
Through these reason partly obtains materials becoming gradually purer, for 
philosophy as science, partly rules and principles by which to bind up these 
materials into a scientific whole, partly, in fine, maxims for our procedure 
ia the search after philosophy. Thirdly, it comprehends the development of 

* Mangled and incorrect. 

f " Subject-matter; " Stoff, matter, or object- matter : see note on § 1. 

% The whole sentence execrable in all respects ; we cannot criticise it in 
detail. 

|| In this sentence there are nine errors, besides imperfections. 

1 In this sentence, what is suffered to remain is worse treated than what 
is thrown out. 



108 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANNS 

reason, as the instrument of philosophy, i. e. the excitation of reason to 
spontaneous inquiry, in conformity to determined laws through internal in- 
clination, and external occasion, and herein the gradual progress manifested 
by individuals, nations, and the thinking portion of mankind. This there- 
fore constitutes an important anthropological phasis of the history of philo- 
sophy." 

Johnson's Version, § 7. — u The external matter consists in the causes, 
events, and circumstances which have influenced the development of philo- 
sophic reason, and the nature of its productions. To this order of facts 
belong : 1. The individual history of philosophers, that is to say, the degree, 
the proportion, and the direction of their intellectual powers ; the sphere of 
their studies and their lives, the interests which swayed them, and even their 
moral characters.* 2. The influence of external causes, that is to say, the 
character and the degree of mental cultivation prevalent in the countries to 
which they belonged ; the prevailing spirit of the times ; and, to descend 
still farther, the climate and properties of the country ; its institutions, reli- 
gion and language.f 3. Tire influence of individuals in consequence of the 
admiration and imitation they have excited, by their doctrines or example ; 
au influence which betrays itself in the matter as well as in the manner of 
their schools." | (Bacon, Locke, Leibnitz.) 

Literal Translation, § 7. — " The external matter consists in those causes, 
events, and circumstances, which have exerted an influence on the develop- 
ment of the philosophising reason, and the complexion of its productions. 
To this head belong, in the first place, the individual genius of the philo- 
sopher, i. e. the degree, the mutual relation, and the direction of his intellec- 
tual faculties, dependent thereon his sphere of view and operation, and the 
interest with which it inspires him, and withal even his moral character. In 
the second place, the influence of external causes ou individual genius. Bocfa 
as the character and state of cultivation of the nation, the dominant spirit of 
the age, and less proximately the climate and natural qualities of the country, 
education, political constitution, religion, and language. In the third place, 
the effect of individual genius itself (through admiration and imitation, pre- 
cept and example) on the interest, the direction, the particular objects, the 
kind and method of the subsequent speculation— an influence variously modi- 
fied in conformity to intellectual character, to the consideration and celebrity 
of schools established, to writings, their form and their contents." (Bacon, 
Locke, Leibnitz.) 

Johnsons Version, § 9. — wt History in general is distinguished, when pro- 
perly so called, from Annals, Memoirs, &c., by its form : /. e. by the com- 
bination of its incidents, and their circumstantial development." || 

* In this sentence there are four inarcuraeies. 

f In this sentence there are tiro omissions, one essential to the meaning. 

and one inaccuracy. 

t Compare the literal version ! 

|| " Circumstantial development ; fnwgmatiachA Dartidbmg. No word 
occurs more frequently in the historical and philosophical literature of Ger- 
many and Holland, than pnnjmutisch, or />nn/matict<s. and PragmatitHUtt. 
far from pragmaHsch being tantamount to " circumstantial/* and op] 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 109 

Literal Translation, § 9. — "History, in the stricter signification, is distin- 
guished by reference to its form, from mere annals, memoirs, &c, through 
the concatenation of events, and their scientific exposition," [i. e. under the 
relation of causes and effects.] 

Passing now to the body of the book : — we shall first take a 
paragraph from the account of Aristotle's philosophy, in which an 
Oxford Tutor and Examining Master may be supposed at home. 
With the exception, however, of four popular treatises, we sus- 
pect that the Stagirite is as little read or understood in Oxford, 
as in Edinburgh. 

Johnson's Version, § 140. — " Aristotle possessed in a high degree the 
talents of discrimination and analysis, added to the most astonishing know- 
ledge of books,* and the works of Nature. To the latter, more especially, 
he had devoted himself. He rejected the doctrine of ideas ; maintaining 
that all our impressions and thoughts, and even the highest efforts f of the 
understanding, are the fruit of experience ; that the world is eternal, even 
in its form, and not the work of a creative providence. In the theory of 
composition he drew a distinction between the matter, which he referred to 
philosophy, and the form, which he derived from poetry.J Instead of fol- 
lowing his master in his way of reasoning from the universal to the parti- 
cular, he always takes the opposite course, and infers the first from the latter. 
His writings contain valuable remarks on the systems of his predecessors ; 
his own being that of Empiricism, modified in a slight degree by the Ration- 
alism of Plato." 

Literal Translation, § 140. — " Aristotle possessed in a high degree the 
talent of discrimination, and an extensive complement of knowledge derived 
from books, and from his own observation of nature. The investigation of 
nature was, indeed, his peculiar aim. He consequently rejected Ideas, and 
admitted that all mental representations (Vorstellungen,) even the highest 
of the understanding, are, as to their matter given, being elaborated out of 

§ 12 of translation) to " scientific," the word is peculiarly employed to 
denote that form of history, which, neglecting circumstantial details, is occu- 
pied in the scientific evolution of causes and effects. It is, in fact, a more 
definite term than the histoire raisonee of the French. The word in this sig- 
nification was originally taken from Poly bins ; but founded, as is now 
acknoAvl edged, on an erroneous interpretation. (See Schweigh. ad Polyb. 
L. i. c. 2 — C. D. Beckii Diss. Pragmaticce Histories apud veteres ratio et judi- 
cium, — and Borgeri Oratio de Historia Pragmatical) 

* Tennemann does not make Aristotle a bibliographer. 

f The question of origin refers not to the subjective efforts of our faculties, 
but to the objective knowledge about which these efforts are conversant. 
The sentence is otherwise mutilated, and its sense destroyed. 

\ What this may possibly mean we confess ourselves at a loss to guess. 
Is it an attempt at translating some interpolation of Wendt in the fas* edition 
of the Grundriss ?— ours is the fourth. It cannot surely be intended for a 
version of what is otherwise omitted by Mr Johnson. 



110 JOHNSONS TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANNS 

experience ; and that the universe is eternal even in its form, and not 
fashioned by a plastic intelligence. He had not a genius (Sinn) like Plato 
for the Ideal [the object of reason proper] but was more the philosopher of 
the understanding (Verstand) ; one, who in his intellectual system (Verstan- 
dessystem) — an Empirism modified by Plato's Rationalism — did not, like 
that philosopher, proceed from the universal to the particular, but from the 
particular to the universal." 

Johnson's Version, § 145.—" Physiology (sic) is indebted to Aristotle for its 
first cultivation ; for an essay, imperfect indeed, but built upon experiment 
associated with theory. The soul he pronounced to be exclusively the active 
principle of life ; the primitive form of every body capable of life, i.e. organ- 
ized His remarks on the characteristics of our means 

of knowledge, that is, the senses,* are deserving of particular attention ; as 
well as his observations on the Common Sense ; and on Consciousness f (the 
existence of which he was the first distinctly to recognise) ; on Imagination, 
Memory, and Recollection. Perception is the faculty which conveys to us 
the forms of objects. Thought is the perception of forms or ideas by means 
of ideas , % which presupposes the exercise of Sensation and Imagination. 
Hence a passive and an active Intelligence. The last is imperishable, (Im- 
mortality independent of Conscience || or Memory). The thinking faculty is 
an energy distinct from the body, derived from without, resembling the 

elementary matter % of the stars Enjoyment is the result 

of the complete development of an energy, which at the same time perfects 
that energy.** The most noble of all enjoyments is the result of Reason." 

* " On the characteristics of our means of knowledge, that is, the senses, 
are," cvc. The original is — ueber die Aeusserungen der Erkenninissthaetightit 
(I i. ueher die Sinne, den Gemeinsinn, &c. See Literal Translation. 

t Neither by Aristotle nor by any other Greek philosopher, was Consci- 
ousness falsely analysed into a separate faculty, and the Greek language con- 
tains no equivalent expression ; a want which, considering the confusion and 
error which the word (however convenient) has occasioned among modern 
philosophers, we regard as anything but a defect. That Ave cannot know 
without knowing that we know, and that these are not two functions of dis- 
tinct faculties, but one indivisible energy of the same power, this is well 
stated by Aristotle in explaining the function of the Common Sense; and 
to this Tennemann correctly refers. It is the error of his translator to make 
Aristotle treat explicitly of consciousness by name. 

X No meaning, or a wrong meaning. The term Idea also, in the common 
modern signification, should have been carefully avoided, under the head of 
Aristotle. 

|| Conscience is not used in English for Consciousness. Was Mr Johnson 
copying from the French? 

% The word " matter" is here wrong. 

** u Development of an energy" and " perfecting an energy" in relation 
to Aristotle's doctrine of the Pleasurable, is incorrect. The word in the ori 
ginal ie, as it oughl to be, hn/jK power, or faculty. The term " complete" 
also does not render the original so well as i- perfect." " The perfect exer- 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

Literal Translation, § 145. — " Psychology is indebted to Aristotle for its 
first, though still imperfect, scientific treatment upon the principles of expe- 
rience, although with these he has likewise combined sundry speculative 
views. The soul is the efficient principle of life (life taken in its most exten- 
sive signification) — the primitive form of every physical body susceptible of 
animation, i. e. of one organically constituted His re- 
marks are especially interesting on the manifestation of our cognitive ener- 
gies, i. e. on the Senses, — on the Common Sense, the first approach to a clear 
indication of Consciousness, (die erste deutlichere Andeutung des Bewusst- 
seyns) — on Imagination, Reminiscence, and Memory. The Perceptive and 
Imaginative act (Anschauen) is an apprehension of the forms of objects ; 
and Thought, again, an apprehension of the forms of those forms which 
Sense and Imagination presuppose. Hence a passive and an active Intellect 
or Understanding. To the latter belongs indestructibility (immortality 
without consciousness and recollection .) Thought is, indeed, a faculty dis- 
tinct from the corporeal powers, infused into man from without, and analo- 
gous to the element of the stars Pleasure is the result of 

the perfect exertion of a power ; — an exertion by which again the power it- 
self is perfected. The noblest pleasures originate in Reason. Practical 
Reason, Will, is, according to Aristotle, and on empirical principles, deter- 
mined by notions [of the Understanding], without a higher ideal principle 
[of Reason properly so called.] " 

We conclude our extracts by a quotation from the chapter on 
Kant. 

Johnson's Version, § 373. — " His (Kant's) attention being awakened b}^ the 
Scepticism of Hume, he was led to remark the very different degree of cer- 
tainty belonging to the deductions of Moral Philosophy,* and the conclusions 
of Mathematics ; and to speculate upon the causes of this difference. Meta- 
physics, of course, claimed his regard ; but he was led to believe, that as yet 
the very threshold of the science had not been passed. An examination of 
the different philosophical systems, and particularly of the jejune Dogmatism 
of Wolf, led him to question whether, antecedently to any attempt at Dog- 
matic philosophy, it might not be necessary to investigate the possibility of 
philosophical knowledge, and he concluded that to this end an inquiry into 
the different sources of information,! and a critical examination of their 

tion of a power" is here intended to denote, both subjectively the full and 
free play of the faculty in opposition to its languid exercise or its too intense 
excitement, and objectively, the presence of all conditions, with the absence 
of all impediments, to its highest spontaneous energy. Aristotle's doctrine 
of Pleasure, though never yet duly appreciated, is one of the most important 
generalizations in his whole philosophy. The end of the section is otherwise 
much mutilated. 

* " Moral Philosophy ;" Philosophic Thrice in this §. 

f " Information;" Erkenntnisse. The version is incorrect; even Know- 
ledge does not adequately express the original, both because it is not also 
plural, and because it is of a less emphatically subjective signification. Cog- 
nitions would be the best translation, could we venture also on the verb 
cognize as a version of Erkennen. 



11-2 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANNS 

origin and employment, were necessary ; in which respect he proposed to 
complete the task undertaken by Locke. He laid down, in the first place, 
that Moral Philosophy and Mathematics are, in their origin, intellectual 
sciences.* Intellectual knowledge is distinguished from experimental by its 
qualities of necessity and universality. On the possibility of intellectual know- 
ledge depends that of the philosophical sciences.! These are either synthetic 
or analytic ; the latter of which methods is dependent on the first.:): What 
then is the principle of synthetical a priori knowledge in contradistinction to 
experimental ; which is founded on observation ? The existence of a priori 
knowledge is deducible from the mathematics, as well as from the testimony 
of common sense ; || and it is with such knowledge that metaphysics are 
chiefly conversant. A science, therefore, which may investigate with strict- 
ness the possibility of such knowledge, and the principles of its employment 
and application, is necessary for the direction of the human mind, and of the 
highest practical utility. Kant pursued this course of inquiry, tracing a 
broad line of distinction between the provinces of Moral Philosophy and the 
Mathematics, and investigating more completely than had yet been done, the 
faculty of knowledge.^ He remarked that synthetical a priori knowledge 
imparts a formal character to knowledge in general, and can only be grounded 
in laws affecting the Individual, and in the consciousness which he has of the 
harmony and unison of his faculties.** He then proceeds to analyse the par- 

* " Intellectual sciences ;" rationale oder Vernunft-Wissenchaften. Intel- 
fectus or Intellekt is, in the language of German philosophers, synonymous 
with Verstand, Understanding. The translator therefore here renders, as he 
usually does, one term of the antithesis by the other. The same capital 
error is repeated in the two following sentences. 

f " Philosophical sciences ; " — philosophische Erhenntisse, philosophic know- 
ledges or cognitions. This and the following errors would have been avoided 
by an acquaintance with the first elements of the critical philosophy. 

% " The latter of which methods is dependent on the first." These few 
words contain two great mistakes. In the first place, there is no reference 
in the original to any synthetic and analytic methods, but to Kant's thrice 
celebrated distinction of synthetic and analytic cognitions or judgments, a dis- 
tinction from which the critical philosophy departs. In the second, there is 
nothing to excuse the error that analytic cognitions are founded on synthetic. 
Analytic cognitions are said by Tennemann to rest on the primary law oi 
thought, i. c. on the principle of contradiction. (See Critik d. r. V. p. 189, 
ets.) — The present is an example of the absurdity of translating this work 
without an explanatory amplification. The distinction of analytic and svn- 
thetic judgments is to the common reader wholly unintelligible from the con- 
text. 

|| " Common sense." Kant was not the philosopher to appeal to common 
sense Die gemeine ErkenntntM is common knowledge, in opposition to 
mathematical. (See Crit. d. r. V. Einl. § .">.) 

^[ This sentence is inaccurately rendered, and not duly connected with the 
next. 

** This sentence is incomprehensible to all ; but its absurdity can be duly 

appreciated only by those who know something of the Kantian philosophy. 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 113 

ticulars of our knowledge, and discriminates between its elementary parts so 
often confounded in practice, with a view to ascertain the true nature of each 
species : the characteristics of necessity and universality which belong to a 
priori knowledge being his leading principles."* 

Literal Translation, § 381. — u Awakened by the scepticism of Hume, Kant 
directed his attention on the striking difference in the result of meditation in 
Mathematics and in Philosophy, and upon the causes of this difference. 
Metaphysic justly attracted his consideration, but he was convinced that its 
threshold had yet been hardly touched. Reflection, and a scrutiny of the 
various philosophical systems, especially of the shallow dogmatism of the 
Wolfian school, suggested to him the thought, that, previous to all dogmatical 
procedure in philosophy, it was necessary, first to investigate the possibility of 
a philosophical knowledge ; and that to this end, an inquiry into the different 
sources of our knowledge, — into its origin, — and its employment, (in other 
words, Criticism,) was necessary. Thus did he propose to accomplish the 
work which had been commenced by Locke. Philosophy and mathe- 
matics, he presupposed to be, in respect of their origin, rational sciences, or 
sciences of reason. Rational knowledge is distinguished from empirical by 
its character of necessity and universality. With its possibility stands or falls 
the possibility of philosophical knowledge, which is of two kinds — synthetic 
and analytic. The latter rests on the fundamental law of thought ; but what 
is the principle of synthetic knowledge a priori, as contrasted with empirical, of 
which perception is the source? That such knowledge exists, is guaranteed 
by the truth of mathematical, and even of common knowledge, and the effort 
of reason in metaphysio. is mainly directed to its realization. There is there- 
fore a science of the highest necessity and importance, which investigates, 
on principles, the possibility, the foundation, and the employment of such 
knowledge. Kant opened to himself the way to this inquiry, by taking a 
strict line of demarkation between philosophy and mathematics, and by a 
more profound research into the cognitive faculties than had hitherto been 
brought to bear ; whilst his sagacity enabled him to divine, that synthetic 
knowledge a priori coincides with the form of our knowledge, and can only 
be grounded in the laws of the several faculties which co-operate in the cog- 
nitive act. Then, in order fully to discover these forms of knowledge, ac- 
cording to the guiding principles of universality and necessity, he undertook 
a dissection of knowledge, and distinguished [in reflection] what in reality 
is only presented combined, for the behoof of scientific knowledge." 

Johnson's Version, § 375 . . . "The laws of ethics are superior to the empiri- 
cal and determinable free-will which we enjoy in matters of practice, and as- 
sume an imperative character, occupying the chief place in practical philosophy. 
This categorical principle becomes an absolute law of universal obligation, 
giving to our conduct an ultimate end and spring of action ; which is not to 
be considered as a passion or affection, but as a moral sense of respect for 
law." 

Literal Translation, § 383. . . . "The Moral Law, as opposed to an empi- 
rically determined volition, appears under the character of a Categorical Im- 

* The same observation is true of this sentence and of the following sec- 
tion, which we leave 'without note or comment. 

H 



114 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

perative, (absolute Ought [unconditional duty],) and takes its place at the 
very summit of practical philosophy. This imperative, as the universal rule 
of every rational will, prescribes with rigorous necessity an universal con- 
formity to the law [of duty]; and thereby establishes the supreme absolute 
end and motive of conduct, which is not a pathological feeling, [blind and 
mechanical,] but a reverence for the law [of duty, rational and free]." 

That Mr Johnson makes no scruple of violating the good faith 
of a translator, is a serious accusation — but one unfortunately 
true. This, indeed, is principally shown, in the history of those 
philosophers whose speculations are unfavourable to revealed reli- 
gion. — Speaking of Hume, Tennemann says : — " On the empirical 
principles of Locke, he investigated with a profoundly penetrating 
genius the nature of man as a thinking, and as an active being. 
This led him through a train of consequent reasoning to the scep- 
tical result that, &c And in these investigations of 

Hume, philosophical scepticism appeared with a terrific force, pro- 
fundity (Grundlichkeit), and logical consequence, such as had never 
previously been witnessed, and at the same time in a form of 
greater precision, perspicuity and elegance." Thus rendered by 
Mr Johnson : — " Taking the experimental principles of Locke as 
the foundation of his system, he deduced from them many acute 
but specious conclusions respecting the nature and condition of 
man, as a reasonable agent. He was led on by arguments, the 
fallacy of which is lost in their ingenuity, to the inference that, 

&c The investigations of Hume were recommended, 

not only by a great appearance of logical argumentation, but by 
an elegance and propriety of diction, and by all those graces of 
style which he possessed in so eminent a degree, and which made 
his scepticism more dangerous than it deserved to be." — The same 
tampering with the text we noticed in the articles on Hobbes and 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury. — We hardly attribute to intention what 
Mr Johnson says of Krug, that "he appears to add little to Kant, 
except a superior degree of obscurity." Krug is known to those 
versed in German philosophy, not only as a very acute, but as a 
very lucid writer. In his autobiography, we recollect, he enu- 
merates perspicuity as the first of his three great errors as an 
author ; reverence for common sense, and contempt of cant, being 
the other two. Tennemann attributes to him "uncommon clear- 
ness." 

As a specimen of our translator's contemptuous vituperation of 
some illustrious thinkers, wc shall quote his notes on Fichte and 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 115 

Schelling, of whose systems, it is almost needless to say, his trans- 
lation proves him to have understood nothing. 

After reversing in the text what Tennemann asserts of Fichte's 
unmerited persecution, we have the following note : — " It is pain- 
ful to be the instrument of putting on record so much of nonsense 
and so much of blasphemy as is contained in the pretended philo- 
sophy of Fichte ; the statement, however, will not be without its 
good, if the reader be led to reflect on the monstrous absurdities 
which men will believe at the suggestion of their own fancies, who 
have rejected the plain evidences of Christianity." [Fichte was, 
for his country and generation, an almost singularly pious Christian. 
He was even attacked by the theologians — for his orthodoxy.] — 
On Schelling's merits we have the following dignified decision : — 
" The grave remarks of the author on this absurd theory, might 
perhaps have been worthily replaced by the pithy criticism of Mr 
Burchell, apud the Vicar of Wakefield, as applied to other absur- 
dities, videlicet — Fudge — Fudge— Fudge." 

But enough ! — We now take our leave of Mr Johnson, recom- 
mending to him a meditation on the excellent motto he has pre- 
fixed to his translation : — " Difficile est in philosophia pauca esse ei 
nota, cui non sint aut pleraque aut omnia" 



1V.-L0GIC. 

IN REFERENCE TO THE RECENT ENGLISH TREATISES 
ON THAT SCIENCE.* 



(April, 1833.) 

1. Artis Logicoe JRudimenta, with Illustrative Observations on 
each Section. Fourth edition, with Additions. 12mo. Ox- 
ford : 1828. 

2. Elements of Logic. By Richard Whately, D.D., Principal 

of St Alban's Hall, and late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 
Third edition. 8vo. London : 1829. . 

3. Introduction to Logic, from Dr Whately 's Elements of Logic. 

By the Rev. Samuel Hinds, M.A., of Queen's College, and 
Vice-Principal of St Alban's Hall, Oxford. 1 2mo. Oxford : 
1827. 

4. Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Examina- 
tion of Dr Whately's " Elements of Logic," by George 
Bentham, Esq. 8vo. London : 1827. 

5. An examination of some Passages in Dr Whately's Elements 

of Logic. By George Cornewall Lewis, Esq., Student of 
Christ Church. 8vo. Oxford : 1829. 

6. A Treatise on Logic on the Basis of Aid rich, with Illustrative 

Notes by the Rev. John Huyshe, M.A., Brazen-nose College, 
Oxford. 12mo. Second edition. Oxford: 1833. 

7. Questions on AldricKs Logic, with References to the most 
Popidar Treatises. 12mo. Oxford : 1829. 

8. Key to Questions on AldricKs Logic. 12mo. Oxford: 1829. 

9. Introduction to Logic. 12mo. Oxford : 1830. 

10. Aristotle's Philosojyhy. (An Article in Vol. iii. of the SeTenth 

* [In French by M. Tcipse ; in Italian by S. Lo Gatto ; in Cross's Selec- 
tions.] 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 117 

Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, now publishing.) 
By the Rev. Renn Dickson Hampden, M.A., late Fellow of 
Oriel College, Oxford. 4to. Edinburgh : 1832. 

Nothing, we think, affords a more decisive proof of the ob- 
lique and partial spirit in which philosophy has been cultivated in 
Britain, for the last century and a half, than the combined perver- 
sion and neglect, which Logic — the science of the formal laws of 
thought — has experienced during that period. Since the time, 
and principally, we suspect, through the influence of Locke, (who, 
as Leibnitz observed, " sprevit logicam non intellexit") no country 
has been so poor in this department of philosophy, whether we 
estimate our dialectical literature by its mass or by its quality. 
Loath to surrender the subject altogether, yet unable, from their 
own misconception of its nature, to vindicate to logic, on the pro- 
per ground, its paramount importance, as a science a priori, 
distinct, and independent : the few logical authors who appeared, 
endeavoured^ on the one hand, by throwing out what belonged to 
itself, of an unpopular and repulsive character, to obviate disgust; 
and, on the other, by interpolating what pertained to other 
branches of philosophy, — here a chapter of psychology, there a 
chapter of metaphysic, &c. — to conciliate to the declining study 
a broader interest than its own. The attempt was too irrational 
to succeed; and served only to justify the disregard it was 
meant to remedy. This was to convert the interest of science 
with the interest of amusement : — this was not to amplify logic, 
but to deform philosophy ; by breaking down their boundaries, 
and running its several departments into each other. 

In the Universities, where Dialectic (to use that term in its uni- 
versality) once reigned " The Queen of Arts," the failure of the 
study is more conspicuously remarkable. 

In those of Scotland, the Chairs of Logic have for generations 
taught any thing rather than the science which they nominally 
profess ; — a science, by the way, in which the Scots have not lat- 
terly maintained the reputation once established by them in all,* 

* " Les Escossois sont bons Philosophes," — pronounced the Dictator of 
Letters. — (Scaligerana Secunda). — Servetus had previously testified to their 
character for logical subtility : — " Dialecticis argutiis sibi blandiuntur." 
(Prcef. in Ptolem. Geogr. 1533.) [My learned Mend, Mr James Broun of the 
Temple, shews me that the unhappy heretic had here only copied the words 
of Erasmus,— a far higher authority. (Enc. Morice.)] — For a considerable 



118 LOGIC. 



and still retained in other departments of philosophy. To the 
philosophers, indeed, of our country, we must confess, that, in 



period, indeed, there was hardly to be found a continental University of any 
note, without the appendage of a Scottish Professor of Philosophy. — [In the 
Key to Barclays Satyricon, it is said of Cardinal Du Perron, under Henry IV. : 
— " Ejus solicitudine, in Gallia plures Scoti celebri nomine bonas artes pr 
sunt, quani in ipsa Scotia foventur et aluntnra liege." — Sir Thomas Urquhart 
is less euphuistic than usual, in his diction of the following passage : — "There 
was a professor of the Scottish nation, within these sixteen years, in Somure, 
who spoke Greek with as great ease as ever Cicero did Latine, and could have 
expressed himself in it as well and as promptly as in any other language, 
[Urquhart refers to Johannes Camero, the celebrated theologian— and as he 
himself calls him, the " bibliotheca movens"] ; yet the most of the Scottish 
nation never having astricted themselves so much to the propriety of words as 
to the knowledge of things, [?] where there was one preceptor of languages 
amongst them, there were above forty professors of philosophy. Nay, to so 
high a pitch did the glory of the Scottish nation attaine over all the parts of 
France, and for so long a time together continued in that attained height, by 
vertue of an ascendant, the French considered the Scots to have, above all 
nations, in matter of their subtlety in philosophical disceptations, that there 
have not been, till of late, for these several ages together, any lord, gentleman, 
or other in all that country, who being desirous to have his son instructed in 
the principles of philosophy, would intrust him to the discipline of any other 
than a Scottish master ; of whom they were no less proud than Philip was 
of Aristotle, or Tullius of Cratippus. Aud if it occurred, as very often it did, 
that a pretender to a place in any French university, having in his tender 
years been subferulary to some other kind of schooling, should enter into 
competition with another aiming at the same charge and dignity, whose 
learning flowed from a Caledonian source, commonly the first was rejected, 
and the other preferred ; education of youth in all grounds of literature under 
teachers of the Scottish nation being then held by all the inhabitant- of 
France to have been attended, cateris paribus, with greater proficiency than 
any other manner of breeding subordinate to the documents oi' those of an- 
other country. Nor are the French the only men who have harboured this 
good opinion of the Scots in behalf of their inward abilities, but many times 
the Spaniards, Italians, Fleming, Dutch. Hungarians Sweds, aud Polonians. 

have testified their being of the same mind, by the promotions wherennto, 

for their learning, they, in all those nation- at several times, have attained." 
(Jewel, L652, Works, p. 268). — Afl in literature and philosophy, BO in war. 

Scots officers, in great numbers, and of distinguished merit, figured in the 
opposite armies ofGnstavns and Ferdinand, — especially of the former; 
the commandant of the Fort of Bgra, and <ill the executioners or murderers 
<>f Wallenstein, were Scots — with I sprinkling of Irish -gentlemen. 

tOO, were Long the merchant- of Poland, and the " travelling nier- 

chants," Anglice, pedlars, of Europe. On tin-, see lt //</■<■/ 
(1608, p. L26)- one of the squibs against Sdoppins in the Scaligerao contro- 
versy. 1 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 119 

great part is to be attributed the prevalence of the erroneous no- 
tions on this subject promulgated by Locke. No system of logic 
deserving of notice, in fact, ever appeared in Scotland ; and for 
Scottish logical writers of any merit, we must travel back 
for more than two centuries to three contemporary authors, 
whose abilities, like those, indeed, of almost all the more illus- 
trious scholars of their nation, were developed under foreign 
influence, — to Robert Balfour, * Mark Duncan, | and William 



* [" We find in La Logique, ou art de discourir et raisonner of Scipio 
Dupleix, Royal Counsellor, &c., a handsome eulogy of Balfour. The author 
declares that he draws his doctrine from Aristotle, and his most celebrated 
interpreters ' Sur tous lesquels je prise M. Robert Balfor, gentil-homme 
Escossois, tant pour sa rare et profonde doctrine aux sciences et aux langues, 
que pour 1'mtegrite de ses moeurs. Aussiluy doys-je le peu de scauoir que j'ay 
acquis, ayant eu l'honneur de jouir familierement de sa douce et vrayement 
philosophique conversation.' {Preface, f. 5.) Farther on, and in the body 
of the work, (f. 25.) he calls ' M. Robert Balfor, le premier Philosophe de 
nostre memoire,' &c. — This Logic of Dupleix is, with V Organe of Philip 
Canaye, and the Dialectique of Ramus, one of the oldest treatises on this 
science written in French. It is a very competent analysis of the Organon. 
The third edition is of 1607 ; the first probably published at the close of the 
sixteenth century. "— M. Peisse. — My copy of Scipio Dupleix's Logic is 
of the second edition, " enlarged by the author," and in 1604. From the 
"Privilege," at the end, it appears that the first edition was of 1600. As 
M. Peisse remarks, it is an excellent work. — Balfour's learned countryman 
and contemporary, Thomas Dempster, in his Historia Ecclesiastica (§ 209) 
speaks of him, as " sui seculi phoenix, Grsece et Latine doctissimus, philo- 
sophus et mathematicus priscis conferendus," &c. &c. ; and writing in Italy, 
he notices that Balfour was then (1627) living, having been for thirty years 
Principal of the College of Bourdeaux. Balfour's Cleomedes, edition and 
commentary are eulogised to the highest by Barthius and Bake ; whilst his 
Council of Nice, and the notes, have gained him a distinguished reputation 
among theologians. His series of Commentaries on the Logic, Physics, and 
Ethics of Aristotle, were published at Bourdeaux, in 4°, and are all of the 
highest value. The second edition of that on the Organon appeared in 1620, 
and extends to 1055 pages. It is, however, a comparatively rare book, which 
may excuse subsequent editors and logicians for their ignorance of its exist- 
ence.] 

f [It is impossible to speak too highly of the five books of the Inatitutio 
Logica by Mark Duncan, " Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine." The work, 
which extends only to about 280 octavo pages, was at least five times 
printed; the first edition appearing, in 1612, at Saumur, for the use of that 
University, was republished at Paris, in the following year. It forms the 
basis of Burgersdyk's Institutiones Logicce (Leyden, 1626), who had been Dun- 
can's colleague in Saumur ; and that celebrated logician declares, that from 
it, (speaking only of the first or unimproved edition), he had received 



120 LOGIC. 

Chalmers,* Professors in the Universities of Bourdeaux, Saumur, 
and Anjou. In Cambridge the fortune of the study is indicated by 
the fact, that while its statutory teaching has been actually defunct 
for ages, the " Elements of Logic" of William Duncan of Aberdeen, 
have long collegially dispensed a muddy scantling of metaphysic 
psychology, and dialectic, in the University where Downam 

more assistance than from all other systems of the science put together. In 
fact, Duncan's Institutions are, in many respects, better even than his own ; 
and were there now any intelligent enthusiasm for such studies, that rare 
and little book would incontinently be republished. — I have not seen the 
author's Synopsis Ethicae. — Duncan, as physician, figiu-es in the cele- 
brated process of Urban Grandier and the Nuns of Laudun (1634.) Medi- 
cal practice seems indeed to have withdrawn him from philosophical specu- 
lation. James VI. nominated Duncan Physician Royal, and he would have 
transferred himself to London, but his wife and her family were averse from 
migrating "to a ferocious nation and an inclement sky." — His elder bro- 
ther, William, as Dempster assures us, " bonis artibus supra hoc seculum, 
et maxime Grsecis Uteris ad miraculum imbutus," was distinguished also as 
Professor of Philosophy and Physic in the schools of Tholouse and Montau- 
ban.— His son, Mark also, but better known under the name of M. des Ceri- 
santes, was a kind of Admirable Crichton ; his life is more romantic than a 
romance. He obtained high celebrity as a Latin poet ; for, though his pieces 
be few, they comprise what are not unjustly lauded, as the best imitations 
extant of Catullus. By him there is an elegiac address to his father, on the 
republication of the Logical Institution, in 1C27. It is found also in the 
third, but not in the fourth, edition of that work ; and it establishes, once 
and again, that the logician, then alive, was a native of Scotland, and not 
merely born of a Scottish grandfather in England : — 

" Ecce Caledoniis Duncanus natas in oris ;" 
and addressing the book, 

" Scotia cumprimis pernice adeunda volatu i 
Namque patrem tellus edidit. iUa tuum. n 

Dr Kippis (Biogr. Brit. V. 494.) states, on very respectable authority, that 
William and Mark were born in London, their father, Alexander, in IU c< r- 
/(■//. He is, however, wrong.] 

* [The Disputationes Phihsophicae Gulieimi Camerarii Scoti, Congrtga- 
tionis Oratorii Domini Jew Presbyteri (in folio, Paris, k;;5o, pp. 620), is a 
work of much learning, nnd of considerable aeuteness. The first part is 
logical ; but among other treatises of this author, I have not seen his Intro- 
ductio (id Logicam^ (in octavo, Anjou, and of the same year.) — It is a curious 
illustration of the "Scoti extra Scotiam agentes:" that there were Jvoe Came- 
rarii, five Chalmerses; all flourishing in 1680; all Scotsmen by birth; all 
living on the Continent; and there, all Latin authors; vi/... fcwo Wil- 
liams, two Davids, and one George. The preceding age shews BevenU 

others.] 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN OXFORD. 121 

taught;* whilst Murray's Compendium Logicce, the Trinity Col- 
lege text-book, may show that matters are, if possible, at a lower 
pass in Dublin. 

In Oxford, the fate of the science has been somewhat different, 
but, till lately, scarcely more favourable. And here it is neces- 
sary to be more particular, as this is the only British seminary 
where the study of logic proper can be said to have survived ; and 
as, with one exception, the works under review all emanate from 
that University, — represent its character, — and are determined 
and modified by its circumstances. Indeed, with one or two insig- 
nificant exclusions, these works comprise the whole recent logical 
literature of the kingdom. 

During the scholastic ages, Oxford was held inferior to no 
University throughout Europe ; and it was celebrated, more espe- 
cially, for its philosophers and dialecticians. But it was neither 
the recollection of old academical renown, nor any enlightened 
persuasion of its importance, that preserved to logic a place among 
the subjects of academical tuition, when the kindred branches of 
philosophy, with other statutory studies, were dropt from the 
course of instruction actually given. These were abandoned from 
no conviction of their inutility, nor even in favour of others of 
superior value : they were abandoned when the system under 
which they could be taught, was, for a private interest, illegally 
superseded by another under which they could not. When the 
College Fellows supplanted the University Professors, the course 
of statutory instruction necessarily fell with the statutory instru- 
ments by which it had been carried through. The same exten- 
sive, the same intensive, education which had once been possible 
when the work was distributed among a body of Professors, each 
chosen for his ability, and each concentrating his attention on a 
single study, could no longer be attempted, when the collegial cor- 

* [I understand that William Duncan's Elements, and every other logical 
spectre, are now in Cambridge, even collegially, laid, and that mathematics 
are there at length left to supply the discipline which logic was of old sup- 
posed exclusively to afford. If, however, the " Philosophical Society of 
Cambridge" may represent the University, its Transactions are enough to 
show the wisdom of the old and statutory in contrast to the new and illegal, 
and that Coleridge (himself a Cantabrigian, and more than nominally a phi- 
losopher,) was right in declaring " Mathematics to be no substitute for Logic" 
—(See Athenaeum, 24th August 1850.)] 



122 LOGIC. 

porations, a fortuitous assemblage of individuals, in so far as lite- 
rary qualification is concerned, had usurped the exclusive privilege 
of instruction ; and when each of these individuals was authorised 
to become sole teacher of the whole academical cyclopaedia. But 
while the one unqualified Fellow-tutor could not perform the work 
of a large body of qualified Professors ; it is evident that, as be 
could not rise and expand himself to the former system, that the 
present, existing only for his behoof, must be contracted and 
brought down to him. This was accordingly done. The mode 
of teaching, and the subjects taught, were reduced to the required 
level and extent. The capacity of lecturing, that is, of delivering 
an original course of instruction, was not now to be expected in 
the tutor. The pupil, therefore, read to his tutor a lesson out of 
book; on this lesson the tutor might, at his discretion, interpose 
an observation, or preserve silence ; and he was thus effectually 
guaranteed from all demands, beyond his ability or inclination to 
meet. This reversed process was still denominated a lecture. In 
like manner, all subjects which required in the tutor more than 
the Fellows' average of learning or acutcness, were eschewed. 
Many of the most important branches of education in the legal 
system were thus discarded ; and those which it was found neces- 
sary or convenient to retain in the intrusive, were studied in easier 
and more superficial treatises. This, in particular, was the ease 
with logic. 

By statute, the Professor of Dialectic was hound to read and 
expound the Organon of Aristotle twice a-week ; and. by statute, 
regular attendance on his lectures was required from all under- 
graduates for their three la<t years. Fntii the statutory Bystem 
was superseded, an energetic and improving exercise of mind from 
the intelligent study of the most remarkable monument of philo- 
sophical genius, imposed on all, was more especially secured in 
those who would engage in the subsidiary business of tuition. 
This, and the other conditions of that system, thii^ determined a 
far higher standard of qualification in the tutor, when the tutor 
was still only a subordinate instructor, than remained when he 
had become tin 1 exclusive organ of academical education. When, 
at last, the voice of the Professors was silenced in the University, 
ami in the Col lour- tic Fellows had been able t<> exclude all other 
graduates from the now principal other of Tutor, tin* study of 
logic declined with the ability of those bj whom the science mu 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN OXFORD. 123 

taught. The original treatises of Aristotle were now found to 
transcend the College complement of erudition and intellect. 
They were accordingly abandoned ; and with these the various 
logical works previously in academical use, which supposed any 
reach of thought, or an original acquaintance with the Organon. 
The Compendium of Sanderson stood its ground for a season, 
when the more elaborate treatises (erst in academical use) of 
Brerewood, Crackanthorpe, and Smiglecius, were forgotten. But 
this little treatise, the excellent work of an accomplished logician, 
was too closely relative to the books of the Organon, and 
demanded too frequently an inconvenient explanation, to retain 
its place, so soon as another text-book could be introduced, more 
accommodated to the fallen and falling standard of tutorial com- 
petency. Such a text-book was soon found in the Compendium 
of Aldrich. The dignity of its author, as Dean of Christ Church, 
and his reputation as an ingenious, even a learned, writer in 
other branches of knowledge, ensured it a favourable recommen- 
dation : it was yet shorter than Sanderson's ; written in a less 
scholastic Latin ; adopted an order wholly independent of the 
Organon ; and made no awkward demands upon the tutor, as 
comprising only what was either plain in itself, or could without 
difficulty be expounded. The book — which, in justice to the 
Dean, we ought to mention was not originally written for the 
public — is undoubtedly a work of no inconsiderable talent ; but 
the talent is, perhaps, principally shown, in the author having 
performed so cleverly a task for which he was so indifferently 
prepared. Absolutely considered, it has little or no value. It is 
but a slight eclectic epitome of one or two logical treatises in 
common use (that it is exclusively abridged from Wallis is incor- 
rect) ; and when the compiler wanders from, or mistakes, his 
authorities, he displays a want of information to be expected, per- 
haps, in our generation, but altogether marvellous in his. It is 
clear, that he knew nothing of the ancient, and very little of the 
modern, logicians. The treatise likewise omits a large proportion 
of the most important matters ; and those it does not exclude are 
treated with a truly unedifying brevity. As a slender introduc- 
tion to the after-study of logic (were there not a hundred better) 
it is not to be despised ; as a full course of instruction, — as an 
independent system of the science, it is utterly contemptible. 
Yet, strange to say, the Compend of Aldrich, having gradually 
supplanted the Compend of Sanderson, has furnished,, for above 



124 LOGIC. 

a century, the little all of logic doled out in these latter days by 
the University of Bradwardin and Scotus.* 

Even the meliorations of the academical system have not proved 
beneficial to this study : perhaps, indeed, the reverse. Since the 
institution of honours, — since the re-introduction, however limited, 
of a real examination for the first degree in arts, a powerful stimu- 
lus has been applied to other studies, — to that of logic none. Did 
a candidate make himself master of the Organon ? — he would find 
as little favour from the dispensers of academical distinction, as 
he had previously obtained assistance from his tutor. For the 
public examiners could not be expected, either to put questions 
on what they did not understand, or to encourage the repetition 
of such overt manifestations of their own ignorance. The mini- 
mum of Aldrich, therefore, remained the maximum of the 
"schools;" and was "got up," not to obtain honour, but to 
avoid disgrace. — Yet even this minimum was to be made less ; 
there was " a lower deep beneath the lowest deep." The Com- 
pendium, a meagre duodecimo of a hundred and eighty pages, to 
be read in a day, and easily mastered in a week, was found too 
ponderous a volume for pupil, and tutor, and examiner. It was 
accordingly subjected to a process of extenuation, out of which it 
emerged, reduced to little more than a third of its original graei- 
lity — a skeleton without marrow or substance. " Those who go 
deep in dialectic," says Aristo Chius, " may be resembled to crab- 
eaters ; for a mouthful of meat, they spend their time over a 
heap of shells." But your superficial student of logic, he loses 
his time without even a savour of this mouthful: and Oxford, in 
her senility, has proved no Alma Mater, in thus so unpiteously 
cramming her alumni with the shells alone. As Dr Wltatolv 
observes : — " A very small proportion even of distinguished stu- 
dents ever become proficients in logic : and by far the greater 

* Some thirty years ago, indeed, there was printed, in usxtm acad 
jiirtntnlis, certain Ezcerpta ex Aristotdu Organo. The execution of that 
work shows how inadequate its author was to the task he had undertaken. 

Nothing eotdd be more conducive to the rational Btudy of logic than a syste- 
matic condensation of the more essential parte of the different treat! 
the Organon, with original illustration-, and selections from the best com- 
mentators, ancient and modern. As it is, this petty publication ha- exi 
no influence on the Logical studies of the University ; \\<' Bhonld like t<> know 
how many tutors have expounded it in their lectures, how many candidates 
have been examined on it tin- schools. On the logical authors, at least, of 
the l diversity, it has exerted none, 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN OXFORD. 125 

proportion pass through the University without knowing anything 
at all of the subject. I do not mean that they have not learned 
by rote a string of technical terms, but that they understand 
absolutely nothing whatever of the principles of the science.'"' 
The miracle would be, if they ever did. Logic thus degraded to 
an irksome, but wholly unprofitable, penance, the absurdity of its 
longer enforcement was felt by some intelligent leaders of the 
University. " It was proposed," says Dr Whately, " to leave the 
study of logic altogether to the option of the candidates ; " a pro- 
posal hailed with joy by the under-graduates, who had long 
prayed fervently with St Ambrose, — " A Dialectica Aristotelis 
libera nos, Damine." * 

In these circumstances, when even the Heads could not much 
longer have continued obstinate, and Logic seemed in Oxford on 
the eve of following the sister sciences of philosophy to an aca- 
demic grave, a new life was suddenly communicated to the expiring 
study, and hope, at least, allowed for its ultimate convalescence 
under a reformed system. 

This was mainly effected by the publication of the Elements 
of Dr Whately, then Principal of St Alban's Hall, and recently 
(we rejoice) elevated to the Archiepiscopal See of Dublin. (No. 
2, of the works at the head of this Article.) Somewhat previ- 
ously, the Rudiraenta (abbreviated Compendium) of Aldrich had 
been illustrated with English notes by an anonymous author, 
whom we find quoted in some of the subsequent treatises under 
the name of Hill. (No. 1.) The success and ability of the Ele- 
ments prompted imitation and determined controversy. Mr Ben- 
tham (nephew of Mr Jeremy Bentham) published his Outline 
and Examination, in which Dr Whately is alternately the object 
of censure and encomium. (No. 4.) The pamphlet of Mr Lewis 
(on two points only) is likewise controversial. (No. 5). The 
Principal, as becoming, was abridged and lauded by his Vice 
(No. 3) ; and the treatises of Mr Huyshe and others, (Nos. 6, 
7, 8, 9) are all more or less relative to Dr Whately 's, and all 
so many manifestations of the awakened spirit of logical pursuit. 
The last decade, indeed, has done more in Oxford for the cause 
of this science than the whole hundred and thirty years pre- 

* [This addition of St Ambrose to the Litany, I took as recorded by Car- 
dinal Cusa.] 



1 20 LOGIC. 

ceding;* for since the time of Wallis and AldricL, until the 
works under review, we recollect nothing on the subject which 
the University could claim, except one or two ephemeral tracts ; 
— the shallow Reflections of Edward Bentham, about the middle 
of the last century ; and after the commencement of the present, 
a couple of clever pamphlets in vindication of logic, and in extinc- 
tion of the logic of Kett — which last also was a mooncalf of Alma 
Mater. 

* [Since that time, with a rise of the academical spirit, the study of logic 
has been still more zealously pursued in Oxford, and several resident mem- 
bers of the University have published treatises on the science, of no ordinary 
merit. I may chronologically notice those of Mr Wooley, Mr Thomson, Mr 
Chretien, and Mr Mansel. — To two of these gentlemen I am, indeed, under 
personal obligations. — Mr Thomson, in the second edition of his Laics of 
Thought, among other flattering testimonies of his favourable opinion, has 
done me the honour of publishing the specimen which I had communicated 
to him, of a scheme of Syllogistic Notation; and I regret to find, that this 
circumstance has been the occasion of some injustice, both to him and to 
me. To him : — inasmuch, as he has been unfairly regarded as a mere expo- 
sitor of my system ; to me : — inasmuch, as his objections to that system 
have been unfairly regarded as decisive. In point of fact, though we coin- 
cide, touching the thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate in affirma- 
tive propositions, we are diametrically opposed, touching the same quantifi- 
cation in negatives. But, while I am happy, in the one case, to receive even 
a partial confirmation of the doctrine, from Mr Thomsons able and indepen- 
dent speculation; I should be sorry, in the other, to subject, what I deem, 
the truth to the uncanvassed opinion of any human intellect.— To Mr Man.sei, 
besides sundry gratifying expressions of approval, in his acute and learned 
Notes on the lindimmta of Aldrich ; 1 am indebted for valuable aid in the 
determination of a curious point in the history of logic. Instead of Petrus 
Hispanus being a plagiarist, and his Summulae a translation from the Greek, 
as supposed by Ehinger, Keckermann, Placcius, J. A. Fabricios, Brucker, — 
by all, in short, who, for the last two centuries and a half, have treated of 
the matter; it is DOW certain, that the ' k Synopsis Organic" published under 
the name of Michael P&ellus (the younger) is itself a mere garbled versiOD of 
the great logical text-book of the west, and, without any authority, capri- 
ciously fathered, by Ehinger, as an original work, on the illustrious Byzan- 
tine. I am now, in fact, able to prove: — that in the Augsburg Library, the 
Codes from which Ehinger printed, contained neither the title nor the 

author's name under which his publication appeared; and that in several o\ % 
the European Libraries there are extant Greek manuscripts, identical with 
the text of thai publication, ami professing to be merely copies of a transla- 
tion from the Latin Original of Hispanus. — Thi8 detection enables OS 
trace the ffa^aT*, "Kyj«\fe, x. t- /. of Imnunides ami the Greeks to the 

Barbara, Ceiarent, &c. of Hispanus and the Latins.] 



WORKS REVIEWED. 127 

It remains now to inquire : — At what value are we to rate 
these new logical publications ? — Before looking at their con- 
tents, and on a knowledge only of the general circumstances 
under which they were produced, we had formed a presumptive 
estimate of what they were likely to perform; and found our 
anticipation fully confirmed, since we recently examined what 
they had actually accomplished. None of the works are the 
productions of inferior ability ; and though some of them propose 
only an humble end, they are all respectably executed. A few of 
them display talent rising far above mediocrity ; and one is the 
effort of an intellect of great natural power. But when we look 
from the capacity of the author to his acquirements, our judg- 
ment is less favourable. If the writers are sometimes original, 
their matter is never new. They none of them possess, — not to 
say a superfluous erudition on their subject, — even the necessary 
complement of information. Not one seems to have studied the 
logical treatises of Aristotle ; all are ignorant of the Greek Com- 
mentators on the Organon, of the Scholastic, Ramist, Cartesian, 
Wolfian, and Kantian Dialectic. In none is there any attempt 
at the higher logical philosophy : we have no preliminary deter- 
mination of the fundamental laws of thought ; no consequent 
evolution, from these laws, of the system itself. On the con- 
trary, we find principle buried in detail ; inadequate views of the 
science; a mere agglutination of its parts; of these some wholly 
neglected, and others, neither the most interesting nor important, 
elaborated out of bounds ; — and always, though in very different 
proportions, too much of the " shell," too little of the " meat." 
They are rarely, indeed, wise above Aldrich. His partial views 
of the order and comprehension of the science have determined 
theirs ; his most egregious blunders are repeated ; and sometimes 
when an attempt is made at a correction, either Aldrich is right, 
or a new error is substituted for the old. Even Dr Whately, 
who, in the teeth of every logician from Alexander to Kant, 
speaks of " the boundless field within the legitimate limits of the 
science," " walks in the trodden ways," and is guiltless of 
" removing the ancient landmark." His work, indeed, never 
transcends, and generally does not rise to, the actual level of the 
science ; nor, with all its ability, can it justly pretend to more 
than a relative and local importance. Its most original and valu- 
able portion is but the insufficient correction of mistakes touching 
the nature of logic, long exploded, if ever harboured, among the 



128 LOGIC. 

countrymen of Leibnitz, and only lingering among the disciples of 
Locke. 

An articulate proof of the accuracy of these conclusions, on all 
the works under consideration, would far exceed our limits. Nor 
is this requisite. It will be sufficient to review that work, in 
chief, to which most of the others are correlative, and which 
stands among them all the highest in point of originality and 
learning ; — and the rest occasionally, in subordination to that one. 
Nor in criticising Dr Whately's Elements can we attempt to vin- 
dicate all or even the principal points of our judgment. To show 
the deficiencies in that work, either of principle or of detail, 
would, in the universal ignorance in this country of logical phi- 
losophy and of a high logical standard, require a preliminary 
exposition of what a system of this science ought to comprehend, 
far beyond our space, were we even to discuss these points to the 
exclusion of every other. We must, therefore, omitting imper- 
fections, confine ourselves to an indication of some of Dr Whately "s 
positive errors. This we shall attempt, " though the work," as- 
its author assures us, " has undergone, not only the close exami- 
nation of himself and several friends, but the severer scrutiny of 
determined opponents, without any material errors having been 
detected, or any considerable alteration found necessary." In 
doing this, nothing could be farther from our intention than any 
derogation from the merit of that eminent individual, whom, even 
when we differ most from his opinions, Ave respect, both as a very 
shrewd, and (what is a rarer phenomenon in Oxford) a very inde- 
pendent, thinker. The interest of truth is above all personal 
considerations ; and as Dr Whately. in vindication of his own 
practice, has well observed : — " Errors are the more carefully to 
be pointed out in proportion to the authority by which they are 
sanctioned." " No mercy," says Leasing, " to a distinguished 
author." This, however, is not our motto ; and if our " scrutiny " 
be " severe," we arc conscious that it cannot justly be attributed 
to " determined opposition." 

We find matter of controversy even in the first page of the 
Elements, and in regard even to the first question of the doctrine : 

— What is Logic ? — Dr Whately very properly opens i 

statement, if not a definition^ of the nature and domain oflo 
and in no other part of his work have the originality and correct- 
ness of his views been more applauded, than in the determination 
of this fundamental problem. He says: — 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 129 

" Logic, in the most extensive sense which the name can with propriety 
be made to bear, may be considered as the Science, and also as the Art, of 
Reasoning. Tt investigates the principles on which argumentation is con- 
ducted, and furnishes rules to secure the mind from error in its deductions. 
Its most appropriate office, however, is that of instituting an analysis of the 
process of the mind in reasoning ; and in this point of view it is, as has been 
stated, strictly a science ; while, considered in reference to the practical 
rules above mentioned, it may be called the art of reasoning. This distinc- 
tion, as will hereafter appear, has been overlooked, or not clearly pointed 
out by most writers on the subject ; logic having been in general regarded 
as merely an art, and its claim to hold a place among the sciences having 
been expressly denied." (Elements, p. 1.) 

Here the enquiry naturally separates into two branches ; — the 
one concerns the genus, the other the object-matter, of logic. 

In regard to the former : — Dr Whately's reduction of logic to 
the twofold category of Art and Science, has earned the praises 
of his Critical Examiner, but Mr Bentham, it must be acknow- 
ledged, is as often out in his encomium as in his censure. He 
observes : — 

" Dr Whately has in particular brought to view one very important fact, 
overlooked by all his predecessors, though so obvious, when once exhibited, 
as to make us wonder that it should not have been remarked : viz. that 
logic is a science as well as an art. The universally prevailing error, that 
human knowledge is divided into a number of parts, some of which are arts 
without science, and others sciences without art, has been fully exposed by 
Mr [Jeremy] Bentham in his ClirestomatMa. There also it has been shown, 
that there cannot exist a single art that has not its corresponding science, 
nor a single science which is not accompanied by some portion of art. The 
Schoolmen, on the contrary, have, with extraordinary effort, endeavoured to 
prove that logic is an art only, not a science ; and in that particular instance, 
Dr Whately is, I believe, one of the first who has ventured to contradict this 
ill-founded assertion."— (Outline, p. 12 ) 

In all this there is but one statement with which we can agree. 
We should certainly " wonder " with Mr Bentham, had any " so 
obvious and important fact " been overlooked by all Dr Whately's 
predecessors ; and knowing something of both, should assuredly 
be less disposed to presume a want of acuteness in the old logi- 
cians, than any ignorance of their speculations in the new. In 
the latter alternative, indeed, will be found a solution of the 
" wonder." Author and critic are equally in error. 

In the first place, looking merely to the nomenclature, both are 
historically wrong. " Logic," says Dr Whately, " has been in 
general regarded merely as an art, and its claim to hold a place 
among the sciences has been expressly denied." The reverse is 



130 LOGIC. 

true. The great majority of logicians have regarded logic as a 
science, and expressly denied it to be an art. This is the oldest 
as well as the most general opinion. — " The Schoolmen/' says Mr 
Bentham, " have with extraordinary effort endeavoured to prove 
that logic is an art only." On the contrary, the Schoolmen have 
not only " with extraordinary effort," but with unexampled una- 
nimity laboured in proving logic to be exclusively a science ; and 
so far from " Dr Whately being " (with Mr Jeremy Bentham) 
" the first to contradict this ill-founded assertion," the paradox of 
these gentlemen is only the truism of the world beside. This error 
is the more surprising, as the genus of logic is one of those vexed 
questions on which, as Ausonius has it, 

" omnis certat dialectica turba sophorum"; 

indeed, until latterly, no other perhaps stands so obtrusively for- 
ward during the whole progress of the study. — Plato and the 
Platonists considered dialectic as a science ; but with them dialec- 
tic was a real not a formal discipline, and corresponded rather to 
the metaphysic than to the logic of the Peripatetics. — Logic is not 
denned by Aristotle. — His Greek followers, (and a considerable 
body of the most eminent dialecticians since the revival of letters.) 
deny it to be either science or art. — The Stoics in general viewed 
it as a science. — The Arabian and Latin Schoolmen did the same. 
In this opinion Thomist and Scotist, Realist and Nominalist, con- 
curred ; an opinion adopted, almost to a man, by the Jesuit, 
Dominican, and Franciscan Cursualists. — From the restoration of 
letters, however, and especially during the latter part of the six- 
teenth century, so many Aristotelians, with the whole boo 
Ramists. (to whom were afterwards to be added a majority of the 
Cartesians, and a large proportion of the Eclectics.) maintained 
that it was an art ; that the error of Sanderson may be perhaps 
excused in attributing this opinion to " almost all the more recent 
authors" at his time. Along with these, however, (so far is Dr 
Whately from having " brought to view this important fact, over- 
looked by all his predecessors,") there was a very considerable 
party who anticipated the supposed novelty of this author in 
denning logic by the doable genus of art and — In the 

schools of Wolf and Kant. Logic again obtained the name of science. 

* To make reference to these would be tk trop; we count above i doaen 
logicians of this class in our own collection. Bu1 independently of the older 
and less familiar authors, Mr Jeremy Bentham and Dr Wnatelj have do 
claim (the latter makes none) to originality in this observation. Even the 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 131 

But, — to look beneath the name, — as Dr Whately and his cri- 
tic are wrong in imagining that there is any novelty in the obser- 
vation, they are equally mistaken in attributing to it the smallest 
importance. The question never concerned logic itself, but merely 
the meaning of the terms by which it should be defined. The 
old logicians, (however keenly they disputed whether logic were 
a science or an art, — or neither, — or both, — a science speculative, 
or a science practical, — or at once speculative and practical,) — 
never dreamt that the controversy possessed, in so far as logic 
was concerned, more than a verbal interest.* In regard to the 
essential nature of logic they were at one ; and contested only, 
what was the comprehension of these terms in philosophical pro- 
priety, or rather what was the true interpretation of their Aristo- 
telic definitions. Many intelligent thinkers denounced, with Vives, 
the whole problem as frivolous. " Quaestioni locum dedit misera 
homonymia," says Mark Duncan, among a hundred others. The 
most strenuous advocates of the several opinions regularly admit, 
that unless the terms are taken in the peculiar signification for 
which they themselves contend, that all and each of their adver- 
saries may be correct ; while, at the same time, it was recognised 
on all hands, that these terms were vulgarly employed in a vague 
or general acceptation, under which every opinion might be con- 
sidered right, or rather no opinion could be deemed wrong. The 
preparatory step of the discussion was, therefore, an elimination 



last respectable writer on logic in the British Empire, previous to these gen- 
tlemen, Dr Richard Kirwan, whose popular and able volumes were published 
in 1807, defines logic as art and science ; and this in terms so similar to those 
of Dr Whately, that we cannot hesitate in believing that this author had 
his predecessor's definition (which we shall quote) immediately in view. 
" Logic is both a science and an art ; it is a science inasmuch as, by analys- 
ing the elements, principles, and structure of arguments, it teaches us how 
to discover their truth or detect their fallacies, and point out the sources of 
such errors. It is an art, inasmuch as it teaches now to arrange arguments 
in such manner, that their truth may be most readily perceived, or their 
falsehood detected." (Vol. i. p. I.) 

* Father Buffier is unjust to the old logicians, but he places the matter on 
its proper footing in reference to the new. — " Si la logique est une science. 
Oui et non ; selon l'idee qu'il vous plait d'attacher au nom de science, &c. 

Si la logique est un art. Encore un fois, oui et non ; II plait aux 

logiciens de disputer si la logique est, ou n'est pas un art; et il ne leur plait 
pas toujours d'avouer ni d'enseigner a leurs disciples, que c'est une pure ou 
puerile question de nom." (Cours des Sciences, (Logique,) p. 887. ) 



132 LOGIC. 

of these less precise and appropriate significations, which, as they 
could at best only afford a remote genus and difference, were 
wholly incompetent for the purposes of a definition. But what 
the older logicians rejected as a useless truism, the recent embrace 
as a new and important observation. — In regard to its novelty : — 
Do Dr Whately and Mr Bentham imagine that any previous logi- 
cian could ever have dreamt of denying that logic, in their accep- 
tation of the terms, was at once an art and a science ? Let them 
look into almost any of the older treatises, and they will find this 
explicitly admitted, even when the terms Art and Science are 
employed in senses far less vague and universal than is done by 
them. — As to its importance: — Do they suppose that a more pre- 
cise and accurate conception of logic is thus obtained ? The con- 
trary is true. The term Science Dr Whately employs in its 
widest possible extension, for any knowledge considered abso- 
lutely, and not in relation to practice ; and in this acceptation 
every art in its doctrinal portion must be a science. Art lie 
defines the application of knowledge to practice ; in which signi- 
fication, ethics, politics, religion, and all other practical sciences, 
must be arts. Art and Science are thus distended till they run 
together. As philosophical terms, they are now altogether worth- 
less ; too universal to define ; too vacillating between identity and 
difference, to distinguish. In fact, their application to logic, or 
any other subject, is hereafter only to undefine, and to confuse : 
expressing, as they do, not any essential opposition between the 
things themselves, but only the different points of view under 
which the same thing may be contemplated by us; — every art 
being thus in itself also a science, every science in itself also an 
art. — This Mr Bentham thinks the correction of a universal 
error, — the discovery of an important fact. If the question in 
the hands of the old logicians be frivolous, what is it in those of 
the new ! * 



* Such is tin- mosl favourable interpretation we can give ofDr Whately's 
meaning. Bnt the language in which this meaning i- conveyed is most am- 
bignons and inaccurate. E.g. he says: — ".I sriena is conversant about 
knowledge only." (P. 56.) Be cannot mean what the words express, that 
science has knowledge lor its abject-mutter, tor this is nonsense; and the 
word- do not express, what, from the context, we must presume he l! I 
that science has no end ulterior to the contemplative act of knowledge itself. 
Dr Whately thus means by whence what Aristotle meant by speculative a 
i>nt how different in the precision of their definitions I Qutprrixwp 

y.t,,) ■ri'ho; oihYiQiiu.- T.ouKriKr,; V ?(yov j — OT, as AveiTOeS has it. l\r tpt 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 133 

So much for the genus, now for the object-matter. — 

Of Dr Whately's Elements, Mr Hinds says, and that emphati- 
cally : — " This treatise displays — and it is the only one that 
has clearly done so — the true nature and use of logic ; so that 
it may be approached, no longer as a dark, curious, and merely 
speculative study ; such as one is apt, in fancy, to class with 
astrology and alchemy." (Pref. p. viii.) These are strong 
words. 

We are disposed to admit that Dr Whately, though not right, 
is perhaps not far wrong with regard to the " true nature and 
use of logic;" — that he "clearly displays" that nature and 
use, is palpably incorrect ; and that his is " the only treatise 
which has clearly done so," is but another proof, that assertion is 
often in the inverse ratio of knowledge. 

We shall not dwell on what we conceive a very partial concep- 
tion of the science, — that Dr Whately makes the process of 
reasoning not merely its principal, but even its adequate object ; 
those of simple apprehension and judgment being considered not 
in themselves as constituent elements of thought, but simply as 
subordinate to argumentation. In this view logic is made con- 
vertible with syllogistic. This view, which may be allowed, in so 



tivam scimus ut sciamus ; per practicam scimus ut operemur. — In like manner, 
Dr Whately gives, without being aware of it, two very different definitions of 
the term Art. In one place (p. 1) it is said, " that logic may be called the art 
of reasoning, while, considered in reference to the practical rules, it furnishes 
to secure the mind from error in its deductions." This is evidently the A/«- 
texriHvi x^k ^Qocy^xrau of the Greek interpreters, the logica docens (quce tradit 
prcecepta) of the Arabian and Latin schools. Again, in another (p. 56) it is 
said, that u an art is the application of knowledge to practice.' 1 '' If words have 
any meaning, this definition (not to wander from logic) suits only the A<«- 
K&xTtxvi h xgytnt %>otl yvftvotaia, TrfiuypoiTcov of the Greek, the logica utens (quce 
utitur prceceptis) of the Latin Aristotelians. The L. docens, and the L. utens, 
are, however, so far from being convertible, that, by the great majority ot 
philosophers, they have been placed in different genera. The Greek logi- 
cians denied the L. docens to be either science or art, regarding it as an 
instrument, not a part of philosophy ; the L. utens, on the contrary, they 
admttted to be a science, and a part of philosophy, but not separable and 
distinct. The Latins, on the contrary, held in general the L. docens to be a 
science, and part of philosophy ; the L. utens as neither, but only an in- 
strument. Some, however made the docens a science, the utens an art ; 
while by others this opinion was reversed, &c. These distinctions are not 
to be confounded with the pure and applied logics of a more modern philo- 
sophy. 



134 LOGIC. 

far as it applies to the logic contained in the Aristotelic treatises 
now extant, was held by several of the Arabian and Latin school- 
men ; borrowed from them by the Oxford Crackanthorpe, it was 
adopted by Wallis ; and from Wallis it passed to Dr Whately. 
But, as applied to logic, in its own nature, this opinion has been 
long rejected, on grounds superfluously conclusive, by the im- 
mense majority even of the Peripatetic dialecticians ; and not a 
single reason has been alleged by Dr Whately to induce us to 
waver in our belief, that the laws of thought, and not the laws of 
reasoning, constitute the adequate object of the science. This 
error, which we cannot now refute, would, however, be of compa- 
ratively little consequence, did it not, — as is notoriously the case 
in Dr Whately's Elements, — induce a perfunctory consideration of 
the laws of those faculties of thought ; these being viewed as only 
subsidiary to the process of reasoning. 

In regard to the " clearness " with which Dr Whately " dis- 
plays the true nature and use of logic," we can only say, that, 
after all our consideration, we do not yet clearly apprehend 
what his notions on this point actually are. In the very pas- 
sages where he formally defines the science, we find him 
indistinct, ambiguous, and even contradictory ; and it is only 
by applying the most favourable interpretation to his words 
that we are able to allow him credit for any thing like a correct 
opinion. 

He says, that " the most appropriate office of logic (as science) 
is that of instituting an analysis of the process of the mind in 
reasoning," (p. 1 ;) and again, that " the process (operation) of 
reasoning is alone the appropriate province of logic."' (Pp. 13. 
140.) — The process or operation of reasoning is thus the object- 
matter about which the science of logic is conversant. Now, a 
definition which merely affirms that logic is the science which has 
the process of reasoning for its object, is not a definition of this 
science at all ; it does not contain the differential quality by which 
logic is discriminated from other sciences ; and it does not prevent 
tin- most erroneous opinions (it even suggests them) from being 
taken up in regard to its nature. Other sciences, as psychology 
and metaphysic, propose for their object (among the other facul- 
ties) the operation of reasoning, but this considered in it- 
nature : Logic, en the contrary, lias the same for its object, but 
only in its formal capacity ; in fact, it has, in propriety of speech, 
nothing to do with the prone** or operation, hut Is conversant only 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 135 

with its laws. Dr Whately's definition, is therefore, not only 
incompetent, but delusive. It would confound logic and psycho- 
logy and metaphysic, and occasion those very misconceptions in 
regard to the nature of logic which other passages of the Elements, 
indeed the general analogy of his work, show that it was not his 
intention to sanction. 

But Dr Whately is not only ambiguous ; he is contradictory. 
We have seen, that, in some places, he makes the process of rea- 
soning the adequate object of logic ; what shall we think when 
we find, that, in others, he states that the total or adequate object 
of logic is language ? But, as there cannot be two adequate 
objects, and as language and the operation of reasoning are not 
the same, there is therefore a contradiction. " In introducing," 
he says, " the mention of language, previously to the definition of 
logic, I have departed from established practice, in order that it 
may be clearly understood, that logic is entirely conversant about 
language ; a truth which most writers on the subject, if indeed 
they were fully aware of it themselves, have certainly not taken 
due care to impress on their readers." * (P. 56.) And again : — 
" Logic is wholly concerned in the use of language." (P. 74.) 

The term logic (as also dialectic) is of ambiguous deriva- 
tion. It may either be derived from A6yo$ (luliccdsrog), reason, 
or our intellectual faculties in general ; or from A6yo? («^o- 
(po^iKOi), speech or language, by which these are expressed. The 
science of logic may. in like manner, be viewed either : — 1°, as 
adequately and essentially conversant about the former, (the 
internal ^6yo$, verbum mentale,) and partially and accidentally 
about the latter, (the external *6yos, verbum oris ;) or, 2°, as ade- 
quately and essentially conversant about the latter, partially and 
accidentally about the former. 

The first opinion has been held by the great majority of logi- 
cians, ancient and modern. The second, of which some traces 
may be found in the Greek commentators of Aristotle, and in the 
more ancient Nominalists during the middle ages, (for the later 
scholastic Nominalists, to whom this doctrine is generally, but 
falsely, attributed, held in reality the former opinion,) was only 
fully developed in modern times by philosophers, of whom Hobbes 

* Almost all logicians, however, impress upon their readers, that logic is 
(not, indeed, entirely, but) partially and secondarily occupied with language 
as the vehicle of thought, about which last it is adequately and primarily 
conversant. 



136 LOGIC. 

may be regarded as the principal. In making the analysis of the 
operation of reasoning the appropriate office of logic, Dr Whately 
adopts the first of these opinions ; in making logic entirely con- 
versant about language, he adopts the second. We can hardly, 
however, believe that he seriously entertained this last. It is 
expressly contradicted by Aristotle, {Analyt. Post. i. 10, § 7) ; it 
involves a psychological hypothesis in regard to the absolute de- 
pendence of the mental faculties on language, once and again 
refuted, which we are confident that Dr Whately never could 
sanction ; and, finally, it is at variance with sundry passages of 
the Elements, where a doctrine apparently very different is 
advanced. But, be his doctrine what it may, precision and 
perspicuity are not the qualities we should think of applying 
to it. 

But if the Vice-Principal be an incompetent judge of what the 
Principal has achieved, he is a still more incompetent reporter 
of what all other logicians have not. If he had read even a hun- 
dredth part of the works it behoved him to have studied, before 
being entitled to assert that Dr Whately 's " treatise is the only 
one that has clearly displayed the true use and nature of logic," 
he has accomplished what not one of his brother dialecticians of 
Oxford has attempted. But the assertion betrays itself: vrirroXftog 
eL t uc&0eix. To any one on a level with the literature of this science, 
the statement must appear supremely ridiculous, — that the no- 
tions held of the nature and use of logic in the Kantian, not to 
say the Woman school, are less clear, adequate, and correct, than 
those promulgated by Dr Whately. — A general survey, indeed, 
of the history of opinions on this subject would prove, that views 
essentially sound were always as frequent, as the carrying of 
these views into effect was rare. Many, speculatively, recognised 
principles of the science, which almost none practically applied to 
regulate its constitution. — Even the Scholastic logicians display, 
in general, more enlightened and profound conceptions of the 
nature of their science than any recent logician of this country. 
In their multifarious controversies on this matter, the diversity o\' 
their opinions on subordinate points is not more remarkable, than 
their unanimity on principal. All their doctrines admit of a 
favourable interpretation ; some, indeed, for truth and precision, 
hare seldom been equalled, and never surpassed. Logic they all 
discriminated from psychology, metaphysic, &c as a rational, not 
a real, —as & formal, not a material science.— The few who held 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 137 

the adequate object of logic to be things in general, held this, 
however, under the qualification, that things in general were con- 
sidered by logic only as they stood under the general forms of 
thought imposed on them by the intellect, — quatenus secimdis 
intentionibvs substabant. — Those who maintained this object to be 
the higher processes of thought, (three, two, or one,) carefully ex- 
plained, that the intellectual operations were not, in their own 
nature, proposed to the logician, — that belonged to the psycholo- 
gist, — but only in so far as they were dirigible, or the subject of 
laws. The proximate end of logic was thus to analyze the canons 
of thought ; its remote, to apply these to the intellectual acts. — 
Those, again, (and they formed the great majority,) who saw 
this object in second notiojis* did not allow that logic was con- 
cerned with these second notions abstractly and in themselves, 
(that was the province of metaphysic,) but only in concrete as 
applied to first ; that is, only as they were the instruments and 
regulators of thought. — It would require a longer exposition than 

* The distinction (which we owe to the Arabians) of first and second notions, 
(notiones, conceptus, intentiones, intellecta prima et secunda), is necessary to be 
known, not only on its own account, as a highly philosophical determination, 
but as the condition of any understanding of the scholastic philosophy, old 
and new, of which, especially the logic, it is almost the Alpha and Omega. 
Yet, strange to say, the knowledge of this famous distinction has been loug 
lost in " the (once) second school of the church." — Aldrich's definition is 
altogether inadequate, if not positively erroneous. Mr Hill and Dr Whately, 
followed by Mr Huyshe and the author of Questions on Logic, &c, miscon- 
ceive Aldrich, who is their only authority, if Aldrich understood himself, and 
flounder on from one error to another, without even a glimpse of the light. 
{Hill, pp. 30—33 ; Whately, pp. 173—175 ; Huyshe, pp. 18, 19 ; Questions, 
pp. 10, 11, 71.) (Of a surety, no calumny could be more unfounded, as now 
applied to Oxford, than the " clamour" of which Dr Whately is apprehen- 
sive, — " the clamour against confining the human mind in the trammels of the 
schoolmen ! ") — The matter is worth some little illustration ; we can spare 
it none, and must content ourselves with a definition of the terms.— A first 
notion is the concept of a thing as it exists of itself and independent of any 
operation of thought ; as, John, Man, Animal, &c. A second notion is the 
concept, not of an object as it is in reality, but of the mode under which it is 
thought by the mind; as, Individual, Species, Genus, &c. The former is the 
concept of a thing, — real, — immediate, — direct : the latter the concept of a 
concept— formal, — mediate, — reflex. For elucidation of this distinction, and 
its applications, it is needless to make references. The subject is copiously 
treated by several authors in distinct treatises, but will be found competently 
explained in almost all the older systems of logic and philosophy. 



133 LOGIC. 

we can afford, to do justice to these opinions, — especially to the 
last. When properly understood, they will be found to contain, 
in principle, all that has been subsequently advanced of any value 
in regard to the object-matter and scope of logic. 

Nothing can be more meagre and incorrect than Dr Whately's 
sketch of the History of Logic. This part of his work, indeed, 
is almost wholly borrowed from the poverty of Aldrich. As 
specimens : — 

Archytas* by Whately as by Aldrich, is set down as in- 
ventor of the Categories ; and this now exploded opinion is advan- 
ced without a suspicion of its truth. The same unacquaintance 
with philosophical literature and Aristotelic criticism is manifested 
by every recent Oxford writer who has alluded to the subject. 
We may refer to the Excerpta ex Organo, in usum Academical 
Juventutis, — to the Oxonia Purgata of Dr Tatham, — to Mr 
Hill's Notes on Aldrich, — to Mr Husyshe's Logic, — and to the 
Philosophy of Aristotle by Mr Hampden. This last, even makes 
the Stagirite derive his moral system from the Pythagoreans ; 
although the forgery of the fragments preserved by Stoba?us, 
under the name of Theages, and other ethical writers of that 
school, has now been for half a century fully established. They 
stand likewise without an obelus in Dr Gaisford's respectable 
edition of the Florilegium. [The physical treatises, also, as those 
under the names of Ocellus Lucanus and Tima?us Locrius, are 
of the same character ; they are comparatively recent fabrications.] 
Aristotle would be, indeed, the sorriest plagiary on record, were 
the thefts believed of him by his Oxford votaries not false only. 
but ridiculous. By Aldrich it is stated, as on indisputable cvi- 



* [On Archytas, I may refer the render to three excellent monographs : 
by Navarrus (Copenhagen, 1820); by Hartcnstein (Leipsic, 1838); and by 
Oruppe (Berlin, 1840). — The Metaphysical. Physical, and Ethical frag- 
ments, written in the Doric dialect, and bearing the name of Pythagorean 
philosophers, are aft, to a critical reader, obtrusively spurious, and on all, 
this note has been superfluously branded by the German critics and histo- 
rians of philosophy, for above half a century. Meinera began, and nearly 
accomplished, the exposition, instead of Plato and Aristotle stealing their 
philosophies from the Pythagoreans, and their thefts remaining, by a 

miracle, for centuries, unknown, and even unsuspected; the forgers of these 
more modem treatises have only impudently translated the doctrines vi' the 
two philosophers into their supposititious Doric. Their non-exposure, at the 
time, is the strongest proof of the languid literature of the decline.] 



HISTORY OF LOGIC. 139 

dence, that, while in Asia, he received a great part of his philoso- 
phy from a learned Jew ; * and this silly and long derided fable 
even stands uncontradicted in the Compendium to the present 
day : while, by the Oxford writers at large, he is still supposed 
to have stolen his Categories and Ethics (to say nothing of his 
physical doctrines) from the Pythagoreans. What would Schleier- 
macher or Creuzer think of this ! 

In discriminating Aristotle's merits in regard to logic, Dr 
Whately, we are sorry to say, is vague and incorrect. 

" K"o science can be expected to make any considerable progress, which is 
not cultivated on right principles. - - The greatest mistakes have always 
prevailed respecting the nature of logic ; and its province has, in consequence, 
been extended by many writers to subjects with which it has no proper con- 
nexion. Indeed, with the exception of Aristotle, (who is himself not entirely 
exempt from the errors in question,) hardly a writer on logic can be men- 
tioned who has clearly perceived, and steadily kept in view r throughout, its 
real nature and object,'' (P. 2.) 

On the contrary, so far is Aristotle, — so far at least are his 
logical treatises which still remain, (and these are, perhaps, few 
to the many that are lost,) from meriting this comparative eulo- 
gium, that nine-tenths, — in fact, more than nineteen-twentieths, 
— of these treat of matters, which, if logical at all, can be viewed 
as the objects, not of pure, but only of an applied logic ; and we 
have no hesitation in affirming, that the incorrect notions which 
have prevailed, and still continue to prevail, in regard to the 
" nature and province of logic," are, without detraction from his 
merits, mainly to be attributed to the example and authority of 
the Philosopher himself. — The book of Categories, as containing 
an objective classification of real things, is metaphysical, not logi- 
cal. The two books of Posterior Analytics, as solely conversant 
about demonstrative or necessary matter, transcend the limits of 
the formal science ; and the same is true of the eight books of 
Topics, as wholly occupied with probable matter, its accidents 
and applications. Even the two books of the Prior Analytics, in 
which the pure syllogism is considered, are swelled with extra- 
logical discussions. Such, for example, is the whole doctrine of 
the modality of syllogisms as founded on the distinction of pure, 

* [The Jews have even made Aristotle a native Israelite, — born at Jeru- 
salem, — of the tribe of Benjamin, — and a Kabbi deep in the sacred books of 
his nation. (See Bartoloccii Bibliothecn Eabbivica, t. i. p. 471, sq.) ] 



140 LOGIC. 

necessary, and contingent matter ; — the consideration of the real 
truth or falsehood of propositions, and the power so irrelevantly 
attributed to the syllogism of inferring a true conclusion from 
false premises ; — the distinction of the enthymeme, through the 
extraformal character of its premises, as a reasoning from signs 
and probabilities ; — the physiognomic syllogism, &c. &c. The 
same is true of the book On Enouncement ; and matters are even 
worse with that on Fallacies, which is, in truth, only a sequel of 
the Topics. If Aristotle, therefore, did more than any other 
philosopher for the progress of the science ; he also did more than 
any other to overlay it with extraneous lumber, and to impede 
its development under a precise and elegant form Many of his 
successors had the correctest views of the object and scope of 
logic ; and even among the schoolmen there were minds who 
could have purified the science from its adventitious sediment, 
had they not been prevented from applying their principles to 
details, by the implicit deference then exacted to the precept and 
practice of Aristotle,* 

" It has been remarked," says Dr Whately, after Aldrich, 
" that the logical system is one of those few theories which have 
been begun and perfected by the same individual. The history 
of its discovery, as far as the main principles of the science are 
concerned, properly commences and ends with Aristotle." (P. 6.) 
— In so far as " the main principles of the science are concerned," 
this cannot be denied. It ought, however, to have been stated 
with greater qualification. Aristotle left to his successors, much 
to reject, — a good deal to supply, — and the whole to simplify, 
digest, and arrange. — In regard alone to the deficiencies : — If Dr 
Whately and the other Oxford logicians are right, (we think 
decidedly otherwise,) in adding the fourth syllogistic figure, 
(which, by the way, none of them, from Aldrich downwards, ever 
hint to the under-graduates not to be of Aristotelic origin,) the 
Stagiritc is wrong in recognising the exclusive possibility of the 
other three (Analyt. Pr. i. 23, § 1;) and so far his system can 



* [M. Barthelemy Samt-Hilaire, to whom, among many other valuable 
Aristotelic labours of high talent, we owe an excellent French translation of 
the Organon, with copious notes and introductions, lias combated this opi- 
nion. (See the Preface to his first volume, especially pp. xvi — &x, cxlii.) 

I still, however, remain nneon\ ineed : though I eannot now detail inv rea- 
sons.— Assuredly, I do noi plead guilty to the charge of disparaging the 
^•■nin^ of Aristotle : reverencing him as the Prince of PhUosopher$.'\ 



HISTORY OF LOGIC. 141 

hardly be affirmed by them to have been perfected by himself. 
To say nothing of the five moods subsequently added by Theo- 
phrastus and Eudemus, the extensive and important doctrine of 
hypothetical, — a doctrine, in a great measure, peculiar and inde- 
pendent, — was, probably, an original supplement by these philo- 
sophers; previous to which, the logical system remained alto- 
gether defective. [This requires some addition, and some modifi- 
cation.] 

The following is Dr Whately's sketch of the fortune of Logic, 
from Aristotle down to the Schoolmen : — 

" The writings of Aristotle were not only absolutely lost to the world for 
about two centuries, [many, if not most, were always extant,] but seem to 
have been but little studied for a long time after their recovery. An art, 
however, of logic, derived from the principles traditionally preserved by his 
disciples, seems to have been generally known, and to have been employed 
by Cicero in his philosophical works ; but the pursuit of the science seems 
to have been abandoned for a long time. Early in the Christian era the 
Peripatetic doctrines experienced a considerable revival ; and we meet with 
the names of Galen and Porphyry as logicians ; but it is not till the fifth 
[sixth] century that Aristotle's logical works were translated into Latin by 
the celebrated Boethius. Not one of these seems to have made any con- 
siderable advances in developing the theory of reasoning. Of Galen's labours 
little is known ; and Porphyry's principal work is merely on the Predicables. 
We have little of the science till the revival of learning among the Arabians, 
by whom Aristotle's treatises on this as well as on other subjects were 
eagerly studied." (P. 7.) 

In this sketch, Dr Whately closely follows Aldrich ; and how 
utterly incompetent was Aldrich for a guide, is significantly 
shown by his incomparable (but still uncorrected) blunder of con- 
founding Galen with Alexander of Aphrodisias ! " Circa annum 
Christi 140, interpretum princeps Galenus floruit, 'Effryur^ sive 
Expositor, >cot,r' iioxw, dictus," Galen, who thus flourished at nine 
years old, never deserved, never received the title of The Com- 
mentator. This designation, as every tyro ought to know, was 
exclusively given to Alexander, the oldest and ablest of the Greek 
interpreters of Aristotle, until it was afterwards divided with him 
by Averroes. — The names of Theophrastus and Eudemus, the 
great founders of logic after Aristotle, do not appear. — We say 
nothing of inferior logicians, but the Aphrodisian and Ammonius 
Hermice were certainly not less worthy of notice than Porphyry. — 
Of Galen's logical labours, some are preserved, and of others we 
know not a little from his own information and that of others. 



142 LOGIC. 

Why is it not stated, here or elsewhere, that the fourth figure has 
been attributed to Galen, and on what (incompetent) authority ? 
— Nothing is said of the original logical treatises of Boethius, 
though his work on Hypothetical is the most copious we possess. 
— Had Dr Whately studied the subject for himself, he would 
hardly have failed to do greater justice to the Greek logicians. 
What does he mean by saying, " we have little of the science till 
the revival of learning among the Arabians ?" Are Averroes and 
Avicenna so greatly superior to Alexander and Ammonius? 
Dr Whately, speaking of the Schoolmen, says : — 

11 It may be sufficient to observe, that their fault did not lie in their dili- 
gent study of logic, and the high value they set upon it, but in their utterly 
mistaking the true nature and object of the science ; and by the attempt to 
employ it for the purpose of physical discoveries, involving every subject in 
a mist of words, to the exclusion of sound philosophical investigation. Their 
errors may serve to account for the strong terms in which Bacon sometimes 
appears to censure logical pursuits ; but that this censure was intended to 
bear against the extravagant perversions, not the legitimate cultivation, of 
the science, may be proved from his own observations on the subject, in his 
Advancement of Learning." (P. 8.) 

It has been long the fashion to attribute every absurdity to the 
schoolmen; it is only when a man of talent, like Dr Whately. 
follows the example, that a contradiction is worth while. The 
Schoolmen, (we except always such eccentric individuals as Ray- 
mond Lully,) had corrector notions of the domain of logic than 
those who now contemn them, without a knowledge of their works. 
They certainly did not " attempt to employ it for the purpoe 
physical discoveries." We pledge ourselves to refute the accusa- 
tion, whenever any effort is made to prove it ; till then, we must 
be allowed to treat it as a groundless, though a common calumny. 
— As to Bacon, we recollect no such reproach directed by him 
either against logic or against the scholastic logicians. On the 
contrary, " Logic," he says, " docs not pretend to invent sciences. 
or the axioms of sciences, but passes it over with a cuitjuo in 
sua arte credendwm," * And so say the Schoolmen ; and so 
Aristotle. 

* Advancement of Learning: — ami similar statements, frequently occur in 
the De Arguments and Novum Orgonum. The censure of Bacon, most per- 
tinent to the point, i-; in tlic Orgonum, Aph. 68. It is, however, directed, 
nut against the Schoolmen, but exclusively against Aristotle; it does a 
probate any false theory of the nature ami object of loj 

thai misapplications of it: ami. at any rate, it willy simws that i 



MODALITY OF PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 143 

We are not satisfied with Dr Whately's strictures on Locke, 
Watts, &c., but cannot afford the space necessary to explain our 
views. One mistake in relation to the former we shall correct, as 
it can be done in a few words. After speaking of Locke's ani- 
madversion on the syllogism, Dr Whately says : — " He (Locke) 
presently after inserts an encomium upon Aristotle, in which he is 
equally unfortunate ; he praises him for the ' invention of syllo- 
gisms,' to which he certainly had no more claim than Linnaeus to 
the creation of plants and animals, or Harvey," &c. (P. 19.) In 
the first place, Locke's words are, " invention of forms of argu- 
mentation," which is by no means convertible with " invention 
of syllogisms" the phrase attributed to him. But if syllogism 
had been the word, in one sense it is right, in another wrong. 
" Aristotle," says Dr Gillies, " invented the syllogism," &c. ; and 
in that author's (not in Dr Whately's) meaning, this may be cor- 
rectly affirmed. — But, in the second place, Dr Whately is wrong- 
in thinking, that the word " invention" is used by Locke, in the 
restricted sense in which it is now almost exclusively employed, 
as opposed to discovery. In Locke and his contemporaries, to 
say nothing of the older writers, to invent is currently used 
for to discover. An example occurs in the sentence of Bacon 
just quoted ; and in this signification we may presume that 
" invention" is here employed by Locke, as it was also thus 
employed in French, by Leibnitz, in relation to this very passage 
of Locke. 

But from the History, to proceed to the Science itself. 

Turning over a few pages, we come to an error not peculiar to 
Dr Whately, but shared with him by all logicians, — we mean the 
Modality of propositions and syllogisms; in other words, the 
necessity , possibility , &c, of their matter, as an object of logical 
consideration. 

It has always been our wonder, how the integrity of logic has 
not long ago been purified from this metaphysical admixture. 
Kant, whose views of the nature and province of the science were 
peculiarly correct, and from whose acuteness, after that of Aris- 
totle, every thing might have been expected, so far from ejecting 
the Modality of propositions and syllogisms, again sanctioned its 

the name of Dialectic to Ontology. Aristotle did not corrupt physics by logic, 
but by nietaphysic. The Schoolmen have sins of their own to answer for, 
but this, imputed to them, they did not commit. 



144 LOGIC. 

right of occupancy, by deducing from it, as an essential element 
of logical science the last of his four generic categories, or funda- 
mental forms of thought. Nothing, however, can be clearer, than 
that this modality is no object of logical concernment. Logic is 
a formal science ; it takes no consideration of real existence, or of 
its relations, but is occupied solely about that existence and those 
relations which arise through, and are regulated by, the condi- 
tions of thought itself. Of the truth or falsehood of propositions, 
in themselves, it knows nothing, and takes no account : all in logic 
may be held true that is not conceived as contradictory. In rea- 
soning, logic guarantees neither the premises nor the conclusion, 
but merely the consequence of the latter from the former ; for a 
syllogism is nothing more than the explicit assertion of the truth 
of one proposition, on the hypothesis of other propositions being 
true in which that one is implicitly contained. A conclusion may 
thus be true in reality (as an assertion,) and yet logically false (as 
an inference.) * 

But if truth or falsehood, as a material quality of propositions 
and syllogisms be extralogical, so also is their modality. Neces- 
sity, Possibility, &c, are circumstances which do not affect the 
logical copula or the logical inference. They do not relate to the 
connexion of the subject and predicate of the antecedent and 
consequent as terms in thought, but as realities in existence ; 
they are metaphysical, not logical conditions. The syll«> 
inference is always necessary ; is modified by no extraformal 
condition; and is equally apodietic in contingent as in □ 
matter. 

* [In a certain sense, therefore, all logical inference is lnipotlieticaI,-^-\\y\\o- 
thetically necessary; and tlie hypothetical necessity of logic stands opposed 
to absolute or simple necessity. The more recent scholastic philosophers 
have well denominated these two Bpecies, — the necessitas consequentuw and 
the necessitas consequents. The former is an ideal or formal necessity ; the 
inevitable dependence of one thought upon another, by reason of our intelli- 
gent nature. The Latter La a real or materia/ necessity ; the inevitable de- 
pendence of one thing upon another because of its own nature. The former 
is a Logical necessity, common to all legitimate consequence, whatever bo the 
material modality of its objects. The latter is an extralogical noee- 
over and above the syllogistic inference, and wholly dependent on tl.e mo- 
dality of the matter consequent. — This ancient distinction, modern philoso- 
phers have not <»nly Overlooked but confounded. (See 1 contrasted the doc- 
trines of the Aphrodisian and of Mr Dngald Stewart, in Dissertations on 
Reid, ]». 7»il a, note *.)] 



MODALITY OF PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 145 

If such introduction of metaphysical notions into logic be once 
admitted, there is no limit to the intrusion. This is indeed shown 
in the vacillation of Aristotle himself in regard to the number of 
the modes. In one passage (De Interp. c. 1 2, § 1), he enumerates 
four — the necessary, the impossible, the contingent, the possible ; 
a determination generally received among logicians. In another 
(Ibid. § 9), he a'dds to these four modes two others, viz. the true, 
and, consequently, the false. Some logicians have accordingly 
admitted, but exclusively, these six modes ; his Greek interpreters, 
however, very properly observe, (though they made no use of the 
observation), that Aristotle did not mean by these enumerations to 
limit the number of modes to four or six, but thought only of sig- 
nalising the more important. [In general, indeed, as I previously 
stated, he speaks only of the necessary and contingent. (Anal. 
passim.)] Modes may be conceived without end ; — as the certain, 
the probable, the useful, the good, the just, — and what not ? All, 
however, must be admitted into logic if any are : the line of dis- 
tinction attempted to be drawn is futile. Such was the confusion 
and intricacy occasioned by the four or two modes alone, that the 
doctrine of modals long formed, not only the most useless, but the 
most difficult and disgusting branch of logic. It was, at once, the 
criterium et crux ingeniorum. " De modali non gustabit asi?ius," 
said the schoolmen ; " De modali non gustabit logicus," say we. 
This subject was only perplexed because different sciences were 
confounded in it ; and modals ought to be entirely, on principle, 
(as they have been almost entirely in practice,) relegated from the 
domain of logic, and consigned to the grammarian and metaphy- 
sician. This was, indeed, long ago, obscurely perceived by a pro- 
found T)ut now forgotten thinker. " Pronunciata ilia," says Yives, 
" quibus additur modus, non dialecticam sed grammaticam quaes- 
tionem habent." Ramus also felt the propriety of their exclusion, 
though equally unable to explicate its reasons.* 

* [M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (Logique d'Aristote, T. I. Pref. p. hv.) 
says : — " Theophraste et Eudeme, dont on invoque l'autorite, avaient com- 
battu sur plusieurs points la theorie de la modalite ; ils en avaient change 
quelques regies ; mais ils l'avaient admise comme partie integrante de la 
theorie generate. Depuis eux, nul logicien n'a pretendu la supprimer. M. 
Hamilton est jusqu'a present le seul, si Ton excepte Laurentius Valla, au 
xv e siecle, qui ait propose ce retranchement." — Valla, whose Dialectica I take 
shame for overlooking, certainly does reject modals, as a species of logical 
proposition ; but on erroneous grounds. He confounds formal with material 
necessity ; and alleges no valid reason for the retrenchment. The reduction 

K 



146 LOGIC. 

Dr Whately has very correctly stated : — 

" It belongs exclusively to a syllogism, properly so called, (i. e. a valid 
argument, so stated that its conclusiveness is evident from the mere form of 
the expression,) that if letters, or any other unmeaning symbols, be substi- 
tuted for the several terms, the validity of the argument shall still be evi- 
dent." (P. 37.) 

Here logic appears, in Dr Whately's exposition, as it is in truth, 
a distinct and self-sufficient science. What, then, are we to think 
of the following passages ? — 

" Should there be no sign at all to the common term, the quantity of the 
proposition, (which is called an Indefinite proposition,) is ascertained by the 
matter; i. e. the nature of the connection between the extremes, which is 
either Necessary, Impossible, or Contingent," &c, &c. (P. G4.) — " As it 
is evident, that the truth or falsity of any proposition (its quantity and qua- 
lity being known) must depend on the matter of it, we must bear in mind, 
that, in necessary matter all affirmatives are true, and negatives false : in 
impossible matter, vice versa ; in contingent matter, all universals false, and 
particulars true : e. g. ' all islands, (or, some islands,) are surrounded by 
water,' must be true, because the matter is necessary: to say ' no islands, or 
some — not] &c, would have been false: again, ' some islands are fertile,' 
' some are not fertile,' are both true, because it is Contingent Matter: put 
1 all," 1 or l no, 1 instead of ' some," 1 and the propositions will be false," &c, &c. 
(P. 67.) 

In these passages, (which, it is almost needless to say, are only 
specimens of the common doctrine,) logic is reduced from an inde- 
pendent science to a scientific accident. Possible, impossible, neces- 
sary, and contingent matter, are terms expressive of certain lofty 
generalisations from an extensive observation of real existence ; and 
logic, inasmuch as it postulates a knowledge of these generalisa- 
tions, postulates its own degradation to a precarious appendage, — 
to a fortuitous sequel, of all the sciences from which that knowledge 
must be borrowed. If in syllogisms, " unless unmeaning symbols 
can be substituted for the several terms, the argument is eithor 
unsound or sophistical;" — why does not the same hold good in 
propositions, of which syllogisms are but the complement ? But 

of the Necessary and Contingent to the Apodictic and Problematic is modern, 
and, I think, erroneous. For all the necessary \b not apodktic or demonstrable j 
and the contingent ib by no means convertible with the doubtful or problematic. 
There is here also a mixing of the subjective with the objective. In my view. 

modes are only material affections of tin 1 predicate, ov. \\ may be, of tin- 

Bubject; ami tli"M- which, from their generality, have been contemplated in 

logic, may, 1 think, be reduced to the relation of genua ami .-juries, ami their 

consecution, thereby, recalled t«» the utmost simplicity. — 1 agree with Mr 
Mansel, (Pref. p. ii.). it' I do not misapprehend him.] 



ARGUMENT = MIDDLE TERM. 147 

A, and B, and C, know nothing of the necessary, impossible, con- 
tingent. Is logic a formal science in one chapter, a real science 
in another ? Is it independent, as a constituted whole ; and yet 
dependent, in its constituent parts ? 

We cannot pass without notice Dr Whately's employment of 
the term Argument. This word he defines, and professes to use 
in a '•' strict logical sense;" and gives us, moreover, under a dis- 
tinct head, a formal enumeration of its other various significations 
in ordinary discourse. The true logical acceptation of the term, 
he, however, not only does not employ, but even absolutely over- 
looks ; while, otherwise, his list of meanings is neither well discri- 
minated, nor at all complete. We shall speak only of the logical 
omission and mistake. 

u Reasoning (or discourse) expressed in words is argument; and an argu- 
ment stated at full length, and in its regular form, is called a syllogism ; the 
third part of logic, therefore, treats of the syllogism. Every argument con- 
sists of two parts ; that which is proved; and that by means of which it is 
proved," &c. And in a note on this : — " I mean, in the strict technical 
sense ; for, in popular use, the word Argument is often employed to denote 
the latter of these two parts alone : e. g. this is an argument to prove so and 
so," &c. (P. 72.) 

Now, the signification, here (not quite correctly) given as the 
"popular use" of the term, is nearer to the "strict technical 
sense" than that which Dr Whately supposes to be such. In 
technical propriety argument cannot be used for argumentation, 
as he thinks, — but exclusively for its middle term. In this mean- 
ing the word (though not with uniform consistency) was employed 
by Cicero, Quintilian, Boethius, &c. ; it was thus subsequently 
used by the Latin Aristotelians, from whom it passed even to the 
Ramists ; * and this is the meaning which the expression always, 
first and most naturally, suggests to a logician. Of the older dia- 
lecticians, Crackanthorpe is the only one we recollect, who uses, 
and professes to use, the word not in its strict logical signification, 
but with the vulgar as convertible with Reasoning. In vindicat- 
ing his innovation, he, however, misrepresents his authorities. 
Sanderson is, if we remember, rigidly correct. The example of 

* Ramus, in his definitions, indeed, abusively extends the word to both 
the other terms ; the middle he calls the tertium argumentum. Throughout 
his writings, however, — and the same is true of those of his friend Talaeus, — 
argumentum, without an adjective, is uniformly the word used for the middle 
term of a syllogism ; and in this he is followed by the Ramists and Semi- 
Ramists in general. 



148 LOGIC. 

Crackanthorpe, and of some French Cartesians, may have seduced 
Wallis ; and Wallis's authority, with his own ignorance of logical 
propriety, determined the usage ofAldrich — and of Oxford. — We 
say again Aldrich's ignorance ; and the point in question supplies 
a significant example. " Terminus tertius [says he] cui quses- 
tionis extrema comparantur, Aristoteli Argumentum, vulgo Me- 
dium." The reverse would be correct : — " Aristoteli Medium, 
vulgo Argumentum." This elementary blunder of the Dean, 
corrected by none, is repeated by nearly all his epitomators, 
expositors, and imitators. It stands in Hill (p. 118) — in Huyshe 
(p. 84) — in the Questions on Logic (p. 41) — and in the Key to 
the Questions (p. 101) ; and proves emphatically, that, for a cen- 
tury and a half, at least, the Organon (to say nothing of other 
logical works) could have been as little read in Oxford as the 
Targum or Zendavesta. 

A parallel to this error is Dr Whately's statement, that " the 
Major Premiss is often called the Principle." (P. 25.) The major 
premise is often called the Proposition ; never the Principle. A 
principle may, indeed, be a major premise ; but we make bold 
to say, that no logician ever employed the term Principle as a 
synonym e for major premise. 

Speaking of the Dilemma, Dr Whately says : — " Most, if not 
all, writers on this point, either omit to tell, whether the Dilemma 
is a kind of conditional or of disjunctive argument, or else refer 
it to the latter class, on account of its having one disjunctive pre- 
miss ; though it clearly belongs to the class of conditionals." (P. 
100.) Most, if not all, logical writers, do not omit to tell this, 
but Dr Whately, we fear, has omitted to consult them ; and the 
opinion he himself adopts, so far from being held by few or none, 
has been, in fact, long the catholic doctrine. For every one logi- 
cian, during the last century, who does not hold the dilemma to 
be a conditional syllogism, we could produce ten who do. 

Dr Whately, — indeed all the Oxford logicians, — adopts the 
inelegant division of the Hypothetical proposition and sylli e 
into the Conditional and Disjunctive. This is wrong in itself. 
The name of the genus should not. without necessity, be 
founded with that of a Bpecies. But the terms Hypothetical 
and Conditional are in Bense identical, differing only in the lan- 
guage from which they are taken. It is likewise wrong on the 
score of authority ; for the words have been used a- synonymous 
by those Logicians who. independently of the natural identity 



HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSITIONS AND^SYLLOGISMS. 141) 

of the terms, were best entitled to regulate their conventional 
use. — Boethius, the first among the Latins who elaborated this 
part of logic, employs indifferently the terms hypotheticus, condi- 
tionalis, non simplex, for the genus, and as opposed to catego- 
ries or simplex; and this genus he divides into the Propositio 
et Syllogismus conjunctivi (called also conjuncti, connexi, per con- 
nexionem,) equivalent to Dr Whately's Conditionals ; and into the 
Propositio et Syllogismus disjunctivi (also disjuncti, per disjunc- 
tionem.) Other logicians have employed other, none better, terms 
of distinction ; but, in general, all who had freed themselves of 
the scholastic slime, avoided the needless confusion to which we 
object. 

But, to speak now of Hypotheticals in their Aristotelic mean- 
ing, Dr Whately says : — 

" Aldrich has stated, through a mistake, that Aristotle utterly despised 
hypothetical syllogisms, and thence made no mention of them ; but he did 
indicate his intention to treat of them in some part of his work, which either 
was not completed by him according to his design, or else (in common with 
many of his writings) has not come down to us." (P. 104.) 

Any ignorance of Aristotle on the part of Aldrich is con- 
ceivable, but in his censure Dr Whately is not himself correct. 
With the other Oxford logicians, he never suspects the 2wxxoyw/s*oi 
l£ vvoteffsag of Aristotle and our hypothetical syllogisms, not to 
be the same. In this error, which is natural enough, he is not 
without associates even of distinguished name. Those versed 
in Aristotelic and logical literature are, however, aware, that 
this opinion has been long, if not exploded, at least rendered 
extremely improbable. We cannot at present enter on the sub- 
ject, and must content ourselves with stating, that hypothetical 
syllogisms, in the present acceptation, were first expounded, 
and the name first applied to them by Theophrastus and Eude- 
mus. The latter, indeed, clearly discriminated such hypothetical 
syllogisms from those of Aristotle ; and, what has not, we believe, 
been observed, even Boethius expressly declares the 2^AAoy/<r^oV Ig 
cpo'hoytxg of the philosopher to be really categorical, while in re- 
gard to the SvAAoy/^oV ds to dlvvoiTGv, there is no ground of doubt. 
The only reason for hesitation arises from the passage, (Analyt. 
Pr. i. 44, § 4,) in which it is said, that there are many other syl- 
logisms concluding by hypothesis, and these the philosopher pro- 
mises to discuss. Of what nature these were, we have now no 



150 LOGIC. 

means even of conjecture. If we judge from Aristotle's notion of 
hypothesis, and from the syllogisms he calls by that name, we 
should infer that they had no analogy to the hypothetical of 
Theophrastus ; * and it will immediately be seen, that a complete 
revolution in the nomenclature of this branch of logic was effected 
subsequently to Aristotle. We may add, that no reliance is to 
be placed in the account given by Pacius of the Aristotelic doc- 
trine on this point : he is at variance with his own authorities, and 
has not attentively studied the Greek logicians. 

So far we state only the conclusions also of others. The fol- 
lowing observation, as farther illustrating this point, will probably 
surprise those best qualified to judge, by its novelty and paradox. 
It must appear, indeed, at first sight, ridiculous to talk, at the 
present day, of discoveries in the Organon. The certainty of the 
fact is, however, equal to its improbability. The term Categorical 
(x.uTYiyoztx.og), applied to proposition or syllogism, in contrast to 
Hypothetical (uKotiertKog), we find employed in all the writings ex- 
tant of the Peripatetic School, subsequent to those of its founder. 
In this acceptation it is universally applied by the interpreters of 
Aristotle, up to the Aphrodisian ; and previously to him, we ccr- 
taily know that it was so used by Theophrastus and Eudemus. 
Now, no logician, we believe, ancient or modern, has ever re- 
marked, that it was not understood in this signification by the 
philosopher himself. f The Greek commentators on the Organon, 

* [M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (Logique D'Aristote, T. J. Pref. p. l.r. 
sg. and T. IV. Top. i. 8, 9, notes) has done me the honour to controvert this 
opinion, and contends that the Hypothetical syllogisms of Aristotle, are the 
same with those which from Theophrastus have descended to us under that 
name. But however ingenious his arguments, to me they are not con- 
vincing ; and to say nothing of older authorities, he has also against him Dr 
Waitz, the recent and veiy able editor of the Organon in Germany. — I am 
now, indeed, more even than formerly, persuaded, that our hypothetical^ are 
not the reasonings from hypothesis of the father of logic : for I think it can 
lie shewn, that our hypothetical and disjunctive syllogisms are only immedi- 
ate inferences, and not therefore entitled, in Aristotelic language, to the Btyle 
Of syllogisms at all. | 

f |.M. lYisse, in his extensive logical reading, has found the following 
unexclnsive, though merely incidental, observation by the thrice learned 
Gerard John Vouiiui — " Nusquam in Aristotele syllogismus categoricus 
opponitur hypothetico." (/v Ndtura Lrfttmt, /.. iv. c. 8, § 8) — 1 ha\< 
met with an earlier authority, in Oardamts; hut he states only that Arts- 
totle ven frequently uses categoric for affirmative, not that he always doea 



HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 151 

indeed, once and again observe, in particular places, that the 
term categorical is there to be interpreted affirmative ; but none 
has made the general observation, that it was never applied by 
Aristotle in the sense in which it was exclusively usurped by 
themselves. But so it is. Throughout the Organon there is not 
to be found a single passage, in which categorical stands 
opposed to hypothetical, (1% viroOfaeus) ; there is not a single 
passage in which it is not manifestly in the meaning of affirma- 
tive, as convertible with x*ru<p*rix6s t and opposed to dvocpocrtKOg 
and otz%yitix6s. Nor is the induction scanty. In the Prior Analy- 
tics alone, the word occurs at least eighty-five times. — Nay, 
farther ; as this never was, so there is another term always em- 
ployed by Aristotle in contrast to his syllogisms by hypothesis. 
The syllogisms of this class, (whether they conclude by agreement, 
or through a reductio ad absurdum,) he uniformly opposes to 
those which conclude hmrikmst ostensirely ; and the number of 
passages in which this opposition occurs are not a few. — Catego- 
rical, in our signification, is thus not of Aristotelic origin. The 
change in the meaning of the term was undoubtedly, we think, 
introduced by Theophrastus. The marvel is, that no logician or 
commentator has hitherto signalized the contrast between the 
Aristotelic signification of the word, and that which has subse- 
quently prevailed.* 

We may allude (we can do no more) to another instance, in 
which Aristotle's meaning has been almost universally mistaken ; 
and to the authority of this mistake we owe the introduction of 
an illogical absurdity into all the systems of logic. We refer to 
the Enthymeme. — On the vulgar doctrine this is a species of rea- 
soning, distinguished from the syllogism proper, by having one or 
other of its premises, not expressed, but understood ; and this 
distinction, without a suspicion either of its legitimacy or origin, 

so. (Co?itr. Log. Ixxiv.) With these individual and partial exceptions, the 
general statement in the text stands good. 

Boethius, I think, has greatly contributed to this confusion of the terms. 
In his versions from the Organon, he uniformly translates Aristotle's kutyj- 
yoQtxog (affirmative,) by prcedicativus ; and Aristotle's xxroitpoiTizos, (a mere 
syuonyme,) affirmativus: whereas, in his original writings, he uses the term 
prcedicativus for KurYiyo^ix,6g, in the post- Aristotelic signification.— Apuleius, 
on the contrary, (followed by Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville,) always em- 
ploys dedicativus in opposition to abdicativus ; and prcedicativus in opposition 
to conditionalis. And rightly. (De Dogm. Plat. 1. iii.)] 

* [See note (f) top. 150.] 



152 LOGIC. 

is fathered on the Stagirite. — The division of syllogism and en- 
thymeme, in this sense, would involve nothing less than a dis- 
crimination of species between the reasoning of logic and the 
reasoning of ordinary discourse ; syllogism being the form pecu- 
liar to the one, enthymeme that appropriate to the other. — Nay, 
even this distinction, if admitted, would not avail ; syllogism and 
enthymeme being distinguished as two intralogical forms of argu- 
mentation. Those who defend the distinction are thus driven 
back on the even greater absurdity, — of establishing an essential 
difference of form, on an accidental variety of expression, — of 
maintaining that logic regards the accident of the external lan- 
guage, and not the necessity of the internal thought. This, at 
least, is not the opinion of Aristotle, who declares : — " Syllogism 
and Demonstration belong not to the outward discourse, but to 
the discourse which passes in the mind : — Ov tt^6; to* i^o x«V»» ^ 

«7ro'<$£/f/f, dKhdc 7T(>6s rou tu rifl ^vxy i*"d ovZi ovKkoyiarpog-' 1 {^Andlyt. Post. 

i. 10, § 7.) — But if the distinction, in its general nature, be unphi- 
losophical, it is still more irrational at the hands of its reputed 
author. For Aristotle distinguishes the enthvmeme from the 
mere syllogism, as a reasoning of a peculiar matter, — from signs 
and likelihoods; so that, if he over-and-above discriminated these 
by an accident of form, he would divide the genus by two differ- 
ences, and differences of a merely contingent association. Yet, 
strange to say, this improbability has been believed ; — believed 
without any cogent evidence ; — believed from the most ancient 
times ; and even when the opinion was at last competently refuted, 
the refutation was itself so immediately forgotten, that there 
seems not to be at present a logical author (not to say in England, 
but) in Europe, who is even aware of the existence o\' the contro- 
versy.* 

A discussion of the question would exceed our limits. For 
those who may wish to study the point, we may briefly indicate 
ourcesof information ; and these, though few, will be found. 
w<> think, to be exhaustive. 

Towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, the celebrated 
Rodolphus Agricola, (f L485,) in his posthumous hook. /), Tnvm* 
Hone Dialectica, recognises it as doubtful, whether Aristotle meant 

* In this country, some years ago, the question waa stated in i popular 
miscellany, with his usual ability, by a learned friend to whom \\«' pointed 
oul the evidence; bul none of the subsequent-writers have profited by the 

information. 



ENTHYMEME. 153 

to discriminate the Enthymeme from the Syllogism, by any pecu- 
liarity of form ; and Phrissemius in his Scholia on that book, 
(1523), shows articulately, that the common opinion was at 
variance with the statements of the Philosopher. Without, it is 
probable, any knowledge of Phrissemius, the matter was discussed 
by Majoragius, in his Reprehensio?ies contra Nizolium, and his 
Explanations in Aristotelis Rhetoricam, — the latter in 1572. 
Twenty-five years thereafter, Julius Pacius (who was not appa- 
rently aware of either) argued the whole question on far broader 
grounds ; and, in particular, on the authority of four Greek 
MSS., ejected as a gloss the term kt&lw (imperfectus), (Analyt. 
Pr. ii. 27, § 3,) on which the argument for the common doctrine 
mainly rests; which has been also silently done by the Berlin 
Academicians, in their late splendid edition of Aristotle's works, 
on two of the three MSS. of the Organon, on which they found. 
We may notice, that the Masters of Louvain, in their commen- 
tary on the logical treatises of Aristotle (1535), observe, that " the 
word imperfectus is not to be found in some codices, but that it 
ought to be supplied is shewn, both by the Greek [printed] 
copies and by the version of Boethius." Scaynus, in his Para- 
phrasis in Organum (1599), adopts the opinion without arguing 
the question ; and he does not seem to have been aware even of 
the Commentary of Pacius, published three years before. About 
1620, Corydaleus, bishop of Mitylene, who had studied in Italy, 
maintained in his Logic the opinion of Pacius, but without addi- 
tional corroboration ; though in his Rhetoric (reprinted by Fabri- 
cius, in the Biblioiheca Grceca), he adheres to the vulgar doctrinec 
[Becmanus (Orig. 1608 and Manud. 1626,) and Heumannus 
(Poec. 1729,) have nothing new or determinate, though they 
moot the question.] In 1724, Facciolati expanded the argument 
of Pacius — (for he, as the others, was ignorant of Scaynus, Ma- 
joragius, Phrissemius, Agricola, &c, and adds nothing of his own 
except an error or two) — into a special Acroama : but his elo- 
quence was not more effective than the reasoning of his predeces- 
sors ; and the question again fell into complete oblivion. Any one 
who competently reargues the point, will have both to supply 
and to correct.* 

* For example. — Pacius (whom Facciolati, by rhetorical hyperbole, pro- 
nounces — " Aristotelis Interpres, quot sunt, quot fuerunt, quotque futuri 
sunt, longe prasstantissimus,") establishes it as one of the main pillars of his 
argument, that the Greek interpreters did not achnmcledge the term ctTshyg : — 



154 LOGIC. 

We proceed to consider a still more important subject — the 
nature of the Inductive inference ; and regret that we cannot 

" quoniaru Johannes Grammaticus hie nullam ejus mentionem facit ; et tarn 
ipse, quam Alexander, superiori libro, explicantes definitionem syllogismi 
ab Aristotele traditam, ac distinguentes syllogismum ab argumentatione con- 
stante ex una propositione, non vocant hanc argumentationem enthymema, 
sed syllogismum poWhiifcfioiTov" (Comm. in Analyt. Pr. ii. 27, § 3.) — Pacius 
is completely wrong.— Philoponus, or rather Ammonius Hermise, on the 
place in question {Anal. Pr. ii. c. 27, § 3,) states, indeed, (as far as we recol- 
lect, for our copy of his Commentary is not at hand,) nothing to the point. 
[On since referring to the passage, we find that too much had been conceded. 
M. Peisse, too, notices its irrelevancy.] The fallacy of such negative evi- 
dence is however shown in his exposition of the Posterior Analytics, where 
he says; — " 'Ev&vfiyfioi hi etQ-ziTect, oino tov xctTochi^^oiysiv rw t/u ivdv/usiadui 
tyju fiiocu naoToiaiv." (f. 4. a. Edit. Aid. 1534.) Ammonius also, On the five 
words of Porphyry (f. 5 a, ed. Aid. 1546) expressly defines the Enthymeme 
— u A syllogism with one proposition unexpressed; hence called an imperfect 
syllogism.' 1 '' How inaccurate, moreover, Pacius is in regard to the still higher 
authority of Alexander, (whose interpretation of the second book of the 
Prior Analytics, which contains the passage in question, is still in MS., and 
probably spurious,) may be seen by his Commentary on the first book of the 
Prior Analytics, (f. 7. a. b. Edit. Aid. 1534,) compared with his Commentary 
on the Topics, (pp. 6, 7, Edit. Aid. 1513.) This last we shall quote. He 
is speaking of Aristotle's definition of the Syllogism : — " Ttdevrai/" hi 
glVgj/ aXA' ov "Tidivro j," as Ttvzg d^iovaiv, cdriaftsvoi tov T^oyov, — ort (t'/jhiv 
ov'KKoyisix.oig hi svog TS0ivTog hiixvvTcci, otAA' Ik hvo to ikoc-^iarou. Ovg yd(> oi 

TrtQi AvTi7rciT(>o» (Tarsensem Tyriumve ?) ftovoKyppciTovg ov'k'koytopovg 
T^iyovatv, ovx tiol avTChoyio^ol, dKh svhscog i^aruuroit. — — Totovroi hi eiat 
xocl ol pviTOgixol ovKhoytopol, ovg \ v 6 v (A jj ft oct oc Xiyofizv xocl yoc(> iv sxeivotg 
hoxii yiyvio&oct htoc y.iocg KQOTOcoscog ov'K'Koyio'ftog, tu> ryu srigocv yvu^ipcov ovaocv 
vtto hixocoTav, «j ruv ocxqooctuv TTQOOTifaoOoti oiov, x. t. A. - — Aio ovhi oi 
toiovtoi KVQtag av'h'KoyKr^ol, ocKhoc to 'oKov, pr/TOQixol avXhoyiapcoi. E$ uv ovv 
uyi yva^iftov ion to 'Koc^cthznropivov, ovx Iotiv IkI tovtuv oiov ts tov hi iv6vf>cij- 
ftotTOg yiyvivdoct avT^hoy to \u.6v xocl yocQ xocl octt ocvtov tov ovopocTog av'h'hoyta l cc6g 
ovvdioiv Ttvoc T^oycov sotxs a/jpeocivetv' coa7re(> xocl 6 ovft\pY)(pto-pc6g, -^/ijCpay. — From 

these passages, (which arc confirmed by the anonymous Greek author of the 
book " Touching Syllogisms,") it is manifest against Pacius : — 1°, That the 
' KuOvfwfiet was used by the oldest commentators on Aristotle in the modern 
signification, as a syllogism of one expressed premise ; and. 2°, That the 
o-vKhoyto-pog povoh'/} t ufLccTog was not a term of the Aristotelian, but of the 
Stoical School. This appears clearly from Sextus Empiricus, (lust. ii. § L67 : 
Contra Math. viii. § 443 ; ed. Fabr.) Boethius, and all the later Greek logi- 
cians, (with the partial variation of Magentinus and Pachymeres,) also 
favour the common Opinion. Their authority is. however. o\' little weight, 
and the general result of the argument stands unaffected. — In these errors, it 

[fl needless to say, that Facias is follow ed hv Corvdaleus and Faeciolati. 

[I inav here annex a general Statement of the various meaning in which 
the term Enthymeme has been employed; and thongh [cannot tarry to pre 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 155 

echo the praises that have been bestowed on Dr Whately's 
analysis of this process. We do not, indeed, know the logician 

articulate references to the books in which the several opinions are to 
be found, this I think will exhibit a far completer view of the multiform sig- 
nifications of the word than is elsewhere to be found. 

These meanings maybe first distributed into four categories, according as 
the word is employed to denote : — I. A thought or proposition in general ; — 
II. A proposition, part of a syllogism ; — III. A syllogism of some peculiar 
matter ; — IV. A syllogism of an unexpressed part. 

I. — Enthymeme denotes a thought or proposition : 

1. Of any kind. — See Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius, Quin- 
tilian, Sopater, and one of the anonymous Scholiasts on Hermogenes. 

2. Of any kind, with its reason annexed. — See Aristotle, Quintilian. 

3. Of imagination or feeling, as opposed to intellection. — Isocrates, Author of 
the Rhetoric to Alexander, the Halicarnassian. 

4. Inventive. — Xenophon. 

5. Facetious, witty, antithetic. — Quintilian, Juvenal, Agellius. 
II. — Enthymeme denotes a proposition, part of a syllogism: 

1. Any one proposition. — Held by Neocles (?) ; See Quintilian, Scholiast on 
Hermogenes, Greek author of the Prolegomena Statuum, Matthsens Cam- 
ariota. 

2. Conclusion of an Epichirema. — Hermogenes, Scholiast on Hermogenes, 
Rufus, Greek author of the Rhetorical Synopticon, Maximus Planudes, 
Georgius Pletho, M. Camariota. 

This category it is impossible always rigorously to distinguish from IV. 
HI. — Enthymeme denotes a syllogism of a certain matter: 

1. Rhetorical of any kind. — Aristotle, Curius Fortunatianus, Harpocratian, 
Scholiast on Hermogenes, M. Camariota. 

2. From consequents, or from opposites — repugnants, contraries, dissimilar s, 
fyc. — Cicero, Quintilian, Hermogenes, Apsines, Julius Rufinianus. 

3. (Leaving that from consequents to be called Epichirenia,) from opposites 
alone. — Cornificius, Author of the Rhetoric to Herennius, Quintilian, 
Hermogenes, Apsines. 

4. From signs and likelihoods. — Aristotle's special doctrine. 

TV. — Enthymeme denotes a syllogism in which there is unexpressed: — 

a) 1. One or two propositions. — So Victorinus in Cassiodorus. See also 
Cicero, Quintilian and Boethius. 

b) One proposition ; and here : — 

2. Any proposition. — Held by Neocles (?) Quintilian, and the Greek author 
of the Prolegomena Rhetorica ; see also Scholiast on Hermogenes and G. 
Pletho. Aristotle and Demetrius allow this, as a frequent accident of 
rhetorical syllogisms. 

3. Either premise.— -This is the common doctrine of the Greek logicians, fol- 
lowing Alexander and Ammonius, and followed by the Arabians, and of 
the Schoolmen following Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, and the 
Arabians. It is also the doctrine of the moderns. All these parties 
agree in fathering it on the Stagirite. 

4. The major premise; (the non- expression of the minor being allowed to 



156 LOGIC. 

who has clearly defined the proper character of dialectical induc- 
tion, and there are few who have not in the attempt been guilty 
of the grossest blunders. Aristotle's doctrine on this point, 
though meagre, is substantially correct ; but succeeding logicians, 
in attempting to improve upon their master, have only corrupted 
what they endeavoured to complete. As confusion is here a prin- 
cipal cause of error, we must simplify the question by some pre- 
liminary distinctions and exclusions. 

The term Induction (kKoiyuyv)) has been employed to denote 
three very different things : — 1*- The objective process of inves- 
tigating individual facts, as preparatory to illation ; — 2°, A mate- 
rial illation of the universal from the singular, warranted either 
by the general analogies of nature, or by special presumptions 
afforded by the object-matter of any real science ; — 3°. A. formal 
illation of the universal from the individual, as legitimated solely 
by the laws of thought, and abstract from the conditions of this 
or that particular matter. 

That the first of these, an inventive process or process of dis- 
covery, is beyond the sphere of a critical science, is manifest ; nor 
has Induction, in this abusive application of the term, been ever 
arrogated to Logic. By logicians, however, the second and third 
have been confounded into one, and, under every phasis of mis- 
conception, treated as a simple and purely logical operation. 
Yet nothing can be clearer than that these constitute two separate 
operations, and that the second is not properly a logical process 
at all. In logic, all inference is determined rat ione for nice, the 



the common syllogism.)— This is held by two Greek logicians, — Leo 
Magentinus and Georgius Pachymeres. (By the way I may notice that 
Saxius is wrong in carrying up the former to the seventh century ; for Leo 
could not be older than the ninth, seeing that he quotes Psellns.) The 
same opinion I find maintained by Cardanus ; but on a misinterpretation 
of Averrocs. 

The conclusion. — The doctrine of Ulpian the commentator o( Demosthenes, 
of Minucianus, and of a Scholiast on Hermogenes. Though this, as an 
exclusive opinion, be not right, modern logicians are still farther wrong, 
in their otherwise erroneous doctrine of Entlmncme, for not recognising 
as a third order, the non- expression of the conclusion; since this is 
an ellipsis of the \ cry commonest in OUT practice oi' reasoning. Kecker- 
niannus, indeed, (ignorant of the ancient doctrine.) while admitting the 
practice, expressly refuses (o it the name of Entlmncme. 

Two propositions. — Thifl opinion might seem to he held 1»\ BOme Of the 
authorities under category II. ] 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 157 

conclusion being necessarily implied in the very conception of the 
premises. In this second Induction, on the contrary, the illation 
is effected vi materice, on grounds not involved in the notion of its 
antecedent. To take, for example, Dr Whately's instance : The 
naturalist who, from the proposition — " Ox, sheep, deer, goat, 
(i. e. some horned animals,) ruminate," infers the conclusion — 
" All horned animals ruminate," may be warranted in this pro- 
cedure by the material probabilities of his science ; but his illation 
is formally, is logically vicious. Here, the inference is not neces- 
sitated by the laws of thought. The some of the antecedent, as 
it is not thought, either to contain or to constitute, so it does not 
mentally determine, the all of the consequent ; and the reasoner 
must transcend the sphere of logic, if he would attempt to vindi- 
cate the truth of his conclusion. Yet, this, by the almost unani- 
mous consent of logicians, has been admitted into their science. 
Induction they have distinguished into perfect and imperfect ; 
according as the whole concluded was inferred from all, or from 
some only, of its constituent parts. They thus involved them- 
selves in a twofold absurdity. For, on the one hand, they recog- 
nised the consequence of the Imperfect Induction to be legitimate, 
though, admitting it to be not necessarily cogent ; as if logic 
could infer with a degree of certainty inferior to the highest : 
and, on the other, they attempted to corroborate this imbecillity, 
by calling in real probabilities, — physical, psychological, meta- 
physical ; which logic could neither, as a formal science, know, 
nor, as an apodictic science, take into account. This was a corol- 
lary of the fundamental error to which we have already alluded, 
— the non-exclusion of all material modality from the domain of 
logic. Thus, it was maintained, that, in necessary matter, the 
Imperfect Induction was necessarily conclusive ; as if logic could 
be aware of what was necessary matter, — as if, indeed, this itself 
were not the frequent point of controversy in the objective 
sciences, and did not, in fact, usually vary in them, as these same 
sciences advanced.* 

* [Thus, Sir Thomas Browne, expressing the doctrine of naturalists in 
the seventeenth century, declared it to be " impossible, that a quadruped 
should lay an egg, or have the bill of a bird.'''' To the older logicians, there- 
fore, this proposition was of impossible matter. The subsequent discovery of 
the Ornithorynchus Paradoxus has shown to the naturalist that his twofold 
impossibility was possible, and the proposition is, consequently, to our re- 
cent logicians one of possible matter. — "Dogs bark:'''' this was erst of neces- 



158 LOGIC. 

The two first processes to which the name of Induction has 
been given, being thus excluded, it remains only to say a few 
words in explanation of the third, — of that Induction, with which 
alone logic is concerned, but the nature of which has, by almost 
all logicians, been wholly misrepresented.* 

Logic does not consider things as they exist really and in 
themselves, but only the general forms of thought under which 
the mind conceives them ; in the language of the schools, logic is 
conversant, not about first, but about second, notions.} Thus a 
logical inference is not determined by any objective relation of 
Causality subsisting between the terms of the premises and con- 
clusion, but solely by the subjective relation of Reason and Con- 
sequent, under which they are construed to the mind in thought.^ 
The notion conceived as determining, is the Reason ; the notion 
conceived as determined, is the Consequent ; and the relation 
between the two is the Consequence. Now, the mind can think 
two notions under the formal relation of consequence, only in one 
or other of two modes. Either the determining notion must be 
conceived as a whole, containing (under it), and therefore neces- 
sitating, the determined notion, conceived as its contained part or 
parts ; — or the determining notion must be conceived as the parts 
constituting, and, therefore, necessitating the determined notion, 
conceived as their constituted whole. Considered, indeed, abso- 
lutely and in themselves, the whole and all the parts are identical. 
Relatively, however, to us, they are not; for in the order ftf 
thought, (and logic is only conversant with the laws of thoug 
the whole may be conceived first, and then by mental ana 
separated into its parts ; or the parts may be conceived first, and 

sary matter; — " dogs" were then " all dogs," and the inductive conclusion 
compulsory and universal. (YVolfii Logica, § 170.) Since an observation 
of the dogs of Labrador (I think), the proposition, as in our zoologies, BO in 
our logics, has fallen to contingent matter; " i\o<,:<" are now " some d 
and the inductive conclusion, petitory, particular, or false. And BO OH. lint 
in logic, as in theology, — Vdriasse trroris est. 

* [What follows, OH the Logical doctrine of Induction, is, as it has gene- 
rally been admitted to be, I am convinced, true. I would, however, new 

evolve it in somewhat different language. Compare among others: — 
Wuoihifs Logic (j>. 12<>, aq.) : MonseTa Aldricb (App. p. 50,*?.)] 

t (See ]». 187, note (*). 

X [The logical relation of Reason md Consequent, as more than a men 
corollary of the law of Non contradiction, in its three phases, is, 1 am confi- 
dent of proving, erroneous.] 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 159 

then by mental synthesis collected into a whole. Logical infer- 
ence is thus of two and only of two, kinds : — it must proceed, 
either from the whole to the parts, or from the parts to the whole ; 
and it is only under the character of a constituted or containing 
whole, or of a constituting or contained part, that any thing can 
become the term of a logical argumentation. 

Before proceeding, we must, however, allude to the nature of 
the ivhole and part, about which logic is conversant. These are 
not real or essential existences, but creations of the mind itself, in 
secondary operation on the primary objects of its knowledge. 
Things may be conceived the same, inasmuch as they are con- 
ceived the subjects of the same attribute, or collection of attri- 
butes, (i. e. of the same nature) : — inasmuch as they are conceived 
the same, they must be conceived as the parts constituent of, and 
contained under a whole : — and as they are conceived the same, 
only as they are conceived to be the subjects of the same nature, 
this common nature must be convertible with that ivhole. A logical 
or universal whole is called a genus when its parts are thought as 
also containing wholes or species ; a species when its parts are 
thought as only contained parts or individuals. Genus and species 
are each called a class. Except the highest and the lowest, 
the same class may thus be thought, either as a genus, or as a 
species. 

Such being the nature and relations of a logical whole and 
parts, it is manifest what must be the conditions under which the 
two kinds of logical inference are possible. The one of these, 
the process from the whole to the parts, is Deductive reasoning, 
(or Syllogism proper) ; the other, the process from the parts to 
the whole, is Inductive reasoning. The former is governed by 
the rule : — What belongs (or does not belong) to the containing 
whole, belongs (or does not belong) to each and all of the covs- 
tained parts. The latter by the rule : — What belongs (or does 
not belong) to all the constituent parts, belongs (or does not belong) 
to the constituted whole. These rules exclusively determine all 
formal inference; whatever transcends or violates them, tran- 
scends or violates logic. Both are equally absolute. It would 
be not less illegal, to infer by the Deductive syllogism an attri- 
bute, belonging to the whole, of something it was not conceived 
to contain as a part ; than by the Inductive, to conclude of the 
whole, what is not conceived as a predicate of all its constituent 
parts. In either case, the consequent is not thought, as deter- 



160 LOGIC. 

mined by the antecedent ; — the premises do not involve the con- 
clusion. 

The Deductive and Inductive processes are elements of logic 
equally essential. Each requires the other. The former is only 
possible through the latter; and the latter is only valuable as 
realizing the possibility of the former. As our knowledge com- 
mences with the apprehension of singulars, every class or univer- 
sal whole is consequently only a knowledge at second-hand. 
Deductive reasoning is thus not an original and independent pro- 
cess. The universal major proposition, out of which it developes 
the conclusion, is itself necessarily the conclusion of a foregone 
Induction, and, mediately or immediately, an inference, — a col- 
lection, from individual objects of perception, or self-consciousness. 
Logic, therefore, as a definite and self-sufficient science, must 
equally vindicate the formal purity of the synthetic illation, by 
which it ascends to its wholes, as of the analytic illation, by which 
it re-descends to their parts. (See Note (*) p. 171.) 

Not only is the Deductive, thus, in a general way, dependent 
for its possibility on the Inductive, syllogism ; the former is, 
what has not been observed, — in principle and detail, — in whole 
and in part, — in end and in means, — in perfection and imperfec- 
tion, precisely a counterpart or inversion of the latter. The 
attempts that have been made by almost every logician, except 
(perhaps?) Aristotle,* to assimilate and even identify the two 



* [I said perhaps, for Aristotle in his doctrine of Induction, in fact, impli- 
citly contradicts himself. In his development of the inductive process, he is 
compelled to recognise, though he was not prepared to signalise, the univer- 
sal quantification of the predicate in affirmative propositions; a quantification 
which he elsewhere, once and again, explicitly condemns, as. in all 
absurd. It was the detection of this his inconsistency, which first led me to 
the conviction, that the predicate of an affirmative proposition maVyformalfy^ 
or by the laws of thought, be universal; and from thence, again, to th< 
viction, (after this article was written), that tin predicate in propositions, 
both affirmative and negative, should he unexchtsively quantified in logical lan- 
guage, as if is in logical thought. 

lien- M. Peisse lias the following note: — " This » perhaps ■' is very right, 
for it is by no means certain that Aristotle gave to the Inductive 8yll< 

a form absolutely independent. It is even more probable that he assimilated 
it t<» the Deductive, Bince he appears t<> prescribe a conversion i^\' the minor 

premise, in order to legitimate the universal conclusion, (An. Pr. li 

$ i.); this in etVect is t<» transform it int<> a Byllogism o\' the first figure (in 
Barbara). It is even this passage which may have seduced subsequent 
clans, admitting as it does, hou ever, of a different interpretation." 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 161 

processes, by reducing the Inductive syllogism to the schematic 
proprieties of the Deductive, — proceeding as they do on a total 
misconception of their analogy and differences, have contributed 
to involve the doctrine of Logical Induction in a cloud of error 
and confusion. The Inductive inference is equally independent, 
and, though far less complex, equally worthy of analysis as the 
Deductive ; it is governed by its own laws ; and, if judged aright, 
must be estimated by its own standard. The correlation of the 
two processes is best exemplified by employing the same symbols 
in our ascent through an Inductive, and our re-descent through a 
Deductive syllogism. 

Inductive. Deductive. 

x, y, z are A ; B is A ; 

x, y, z are (whole) B ; x, y, z are (under) B ; 

Therefore, B is A. Therefore, x, y, z are A. 

or or 

A contains x, y, z ; A contains B ; 

x, y, z constitute B ; B contains x, y, z; 

Therefore, A contains B. Therefore, A contains x, y, z. 

These two syllogisms exhibit, each in its kind, the one natural 
and perfect figure. This will be at once admitted of the Deduc- 
tive, which is in the first. But the Inductive, estimated, as it has 
always been, by the standard of the Deductive, will appear a 
monster. It appears, on that standard, only in the third figure ; * and 

Aristotle, in expressing the extremes vaguely, as "the one' 1 '' and "the other" 
is more accurate than the logicians, who astrict the reciprocating proposition 
to the minor premise. For his example is only of a single case. On the 
doctrine, indeed, of a quantified predicate, the reciprocation may be, in either 
premise, or in both.] 

* We say — Induction appears a syllogism of the third figure, because, 
though so held by logicians, it is not. [?] The mistake arose from the am- 
biguity of the copula or substantive verb, which in different relations ex- 
presses either " are contained under" or " constitute." Thus, taking Aristotle's 
example : — 

Man, horse, mule, are long-lived ; 

Man, horse, mule, are the whole class of animals wanting bile ; 

Therefore, the whole class of animals wanting bile are long-lived. 

Now here it is evident that the subject stands in a very different relation 
to its predicate in the major and in the minor premise ; though in both cases 
the connexion is expressed by the same copula. In the former, the " are " 
expresses that the predicate determines the subject as a contained part ; in the 
latter, that the subject determines the predicate by constituting it a whole. Ex- 
plicitly thus : 



102 LOGIC. 

then, contrary to the rule of that figure it has an universal con- 
clusion.* (Analyt. Pr. i. 22, § 8). But when we look less par- 
Long-lived — contains — Man, horse, mule ; 
Man, horse, mule, — constitute — Animal wanting bile ; 
Therefore, Long-lived — contains — Animal wanting bile. 
That the logicians have neglected to analyze the Inductive inference as an 
independent process, and attempted to reduce it to the conditions of the De- 
ductive ; is the cause or the effect of a primary deficiency in their technical 
language. They have no word to express the synthesis of a logical whole. 
The word constitute, &c, which we have, from necessity, employed in this 
sense, belongs properly to the relations of an Essential (Physical or Meta- 
physical) whole, and parts. [I would now express this somewhat differ- 
ently ; though not varying in the doctrine itself.] 

* [It will be seen from the tenor of the text, that by the year 1833, I had 
become aware of the error in the doctrine of Aristotle and the logicians, 
which maintains that the predicate in affirmative propositions could only be 
formally quantified as particular ; nay, that Aristotle, by his practice in the 
inductive syllogism, virtually contradicts the speculative precept which he, 
over and over, expressly enounces for syllogism in general. It was not, 
however, for several years thereafter, that I made the second step ; by admit- 
ting in negative propositions a particular predicate. The doctrine of a tho- 
roughgoing quantification of the predicate, with its results, I have, however, 
publicly taught since the year 1840, at the latest. How this doctrine, when 
applied, at once simplifies and amplifies the logic of propositions and of syl- 
logisms, it is not here requisite to state. (But see Appendix II.) I would 
only remark, in reference to certain recent misapprehensions, that my doc- 
trine has, and could have, no novelty from a mere recognition, as possible, of 
the eight propositional forms,— four affirmative and four negative ; — forms, 
which I thus name and number : — 

Affirmative. Negative, 

i. Toto-total . All — is all — . Any — is not any — . 

ii. Toto-partial . All — is some — . Any — is not some — . 

iii. Parti-total . Some — is all — . Some — is not any — . 

iv. Parti-partial . Some — is some — . Some — is not some — . 

.Every system of logic necessarily contemplated off these; for of these eva 
tern of the science expressly allowed some, and expressly disallowed the others. 
By Aristotle and logicians in general, of the Affirmative the even, o\' the Y, - 
gativeihe odd, numbers arc declared admissible, whilst the Others arc overtly 
rejected: — formally, at least, and of necessity ; for though a universal quan- 
tification of the predicate in affirmatives has been frequently recognised, this 
was by logicians recognised, (if not ignorantly,) as mmaterim, contingently, 
and therefore extralogically ; nor am 1 aware o( any previous attempt to 
prove, that, formally or by the laws of thought, even this proposition had a 

right to claim its place in logic. It is not. therefore, mi a mere enumeration of the 

eight propositional forms, \\w Less is it on an ignorance of the ordinary objec- 
tion by logicians,— on a mistake of the meaning of the form- themselves, 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 163 

tially and more profoundly into the matter, our conclusion will be 
very different. 

on a blindness to the results of a thoroughgoing quantification of the predi- 
cate, that I would found any claim of novelty to my New Analytic. Yet on 
this ground it has been actually contested ! — In general, I may say, that 
aware of many partial manifestations of discontent with the common doc- 
trine, I know of no attempt to evince that the doctrine itself is radically 
wrong. Various of these manifestations are recorded by Mr Baynes in his 
excellent " Essay on the new Analytic of Logical Forms." 

The thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate, in its appliance to ne- 
gative propositions, has been demurred to by logicians well entitled to re- 
spect, who do not gainsay it in the case of affirmatives. But not only is 
this application allowable, not only is it systematic, not only is it useful, — it 
is even necessary. — For, to speak even of its very weakest form, that of parti- 
partial negation, " Some — is not some — " ; this (to say nothing of its other 
uses) is the form, and the only form, which we naturally employ in dividing 
a whole of any kind into parts : — " Some A is not some A." And is this form 
(that too inconsistently) to be excluded from logic — exempted from demand ? 
— But, again, to prove both the obnoxious propositions summarily, and at 
once : — what objection, apart from the arbitrary laws of our present logics, 
can be taken to the following syllogism ? — 
" All man is some animal ; 

Any man is not (no man is) some animal ; 

Therefore, some animal is not some animaV 
Vary this syllogism of the third, to any other figure ; it will always be legiti- 
mate by nature, if illegitimate to unnatural art. Taking it, however, as it is : 
— The negative minor, with its particular predicate, offends logical prejudice. 
But it is a propositional form, irrecusable, both as true in itself, and as ne- 
cessary in practice. — Its converse, again, is even technically allowed ; and 
no proposition can possibly be right, if its converse is possibly wrong. For, 
to say, (as has been said, indeed, from Aristotle downwards,) that a parti- 
total negative proposition is inconvertible ; this is merely to confess, that the 
rules of the logicians are inadequate to the truth of logic and the realities of 
nature. In fact, it is to supply this very inadequacy, that the doctrine of a 
thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate is, perhaps, mainly required. 
A toto-partial negative cannot, therefore, be scientifically refused. — But if 
the premises of a syllogism be correct, its conclusion must be obligatory. 
This conclusion, however, is a parti- partial negative : — 

" Some animal (say, rational) is not some animal (say, irrational.)" 
A parti-partial negative is thus a proposition, not only logically valid, but 
logically indispensable. 

Nothing, it may be observed, is more easy than to misapply a form ; no- 
thing is more easy than to employ a weaker, when we are entitled to employ 
a stronger proposition. But from the special and factitious absurdity, thus 
emerging, to infer the general and natural absurdity of a propositional form, 
— this, certainly, is not a logical procedure.— (In part, coincident with what 
I have elsewhere, and that this very day, been obliged to state.) ] 



104 LOGIC. 

In the first place, we find that the two syllogisms present so 
systematic a relation of contrast and similarity, that, the perfec- 
tion of the one being admitted, we are analogically led to presume 
the perfection of the other. In the propositions, the order of the 
terms remains unchanged : but the order of the propositions 
themselves is reversed ; the conclusion of the one syllogism form- 
ing the major premise of the other. Of the terms the major is 
common to both ; but (as noticed by Aristotle) the middle term 
of the one is the minor of the other. In the common minor pre- 
mise, the terms, though identical, have, with the different nature 
of the process, changed their relation in thought. In the Induc- 
tive, the parts being conceived as constituting the whole, are 
the determining notion ; whereas, in the Deductive, the parts 
being conceived as contained under the whole, are the deter- 
mined. 

But, in the second place, however apparently dissimilar in 
figure and proportion may be the two syllogisms on this partial 
standard, it will be found, if we ascend to a higher, that a com- 
mon general principle regulates a similar, nay, a one exclusive 
perfection in each. The perfection of figure in all syllogisms is 
this : — That the middle term should be the determined notion in 
the proposition, the determining notion in the assumption. — This 
condition is realized in the first figure of the Deductive syllogism. 
There the middle term is the subject (contained, determined no- 
tion) in the proposition or major premise ; and the predicate (con- 
taining, determining notion) in the minor premise or assumption. 
— In like manner, in our Inductive syllogism, the middle term is 
the subject (contained, determined notion) of the proposition, and 
the constituent (determining notion) of the assumption. Thus, 
not only are the Inductive and Deductive syllogisms, in a general 
sense, reversed processes; the perfect figure of the one is the 
exact evolution or involution of the perfect figure of the other. — 
The same analogy holds with their imperfections. Taking, for 
example, what logicians have in genera] given as the perfected 
figure, but which is, in fact, an unnatural perversion of tho 
Inductive syllogism, (/. e. its reduction to the first figure, by con- 
verting the terms of the minor premise,) we shall find, that 
its reversal into a Deductive Byllogism affords, as we should 
hive anticipated, only a kindred imperfection (in the third 
figun 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 165 

Inductive. Deductive. 

x, y, z are A ; B is A ; 

B is x, y, z ; B is x, y, z ; 

Therefore, B is A. Therefore, x, y, z are A. 

or or 

A contains x, y, z ; A contains B ; 

x, y, z contain B ; x, y, z contain B ; 

Therefore, A contains B. Therefore, A contains x, y, z. 

We call this reduction of the Inductive syllogism an unnatural 
perversion ; because, in the converted minor premise, the consti- 
tuent parts are perverted into a containing whole, and the con- 
taining whole into a subject, contained under its constituent 
parts. 

After these hints of what we deem the true nature of logical 
Induction, we return to Dr Whately ; whose account of this pro- 
cess is given principally in the two following passages. 

The first: — " Logic takes no cognisance of Induction, for instance, or of a 
priori reasoning, &c, as distinct forms of argument ; for when thrown into 
the syllogistic form, and when letters of the alphabet are substituted for the 
terms, (and it is thus that an argument is properly to be brought under the 
cognisance of logic,) there is no distinction between them : — e. g. a ' Property 
which belongs to the ox, sheep, deer, goat, and antelope, belongs to all 
horned animals ; rumination belongs to these ; therefore to all.' This, 
which is an inductive argument, is evidently a syllogism in Barbara. The 
essence of an inductive argument (and so of the other kinds which are dis- 
tinguished from it) consists not in the form of the argument, but in the rela- 
tion which the subject-matter of the premisses bears to that of the conclusion." 
(P. 110.) — The second: — "In the process of reasoning by which we deduce, 
from our observation of certain known cases, an inference with respect to 
unknown ones, we are employing a syllogism in Barbara with the major pre- 
miss suppressed ; that being always substantially the same, as it asserts, 
that, ' what belongs to the individual or individuals we have examined, 
belongs to the whole class under which they come.' " (P. 216.) 

This agrees, neither with the Aristotelic doctrine, nor with 
truth. 

We must presume, from his silence, that our author, in his 
analysis of the inductive process, was not aware of any essential 
deviation from the doctrine of Aristotle. This he does not seem 
to have studied, either in the Organon, or in any of its authentic 
expositors ; and nothing can be conceived more contradictory, than 
the statements of the philosopher on this subject and those of Dr 
Whately. — Aristotle views the Inductive and the Deductive syllo- 
gisms as, in certain respects, similar in form ; in others, as diame- 
trically opposed. Dr Whately regards them as formally identical, 



166 ' LOGIC. 

and only discriminated by a material difference, i. e, logically con- 
sidered, by no difference at all. — Aristotle regards the Deductive 
syllogism as the analysis of a logical whole into its parts, — as a 
descent from the (more) general to the (more) particular ; the 
Inductive as a synthesis of logical parts into a logical whole, — as 
an ascent from the (more) particular to the (more) general. Dr 
Whately, on the other hand, virtually annihilates the latter pro- 
cess, and identifies the Inductive with the Deductive inference. — 
Aristotle makes Deduction necessarily dependent on Induction ; 
he maintains that the highest or most universal axioms which con- 
stitute the primary and immediate propositions of the former, are 
all conclusions previously furnished by the latter. Whately, on 
the contrary, implicitly asserts the independence of the syllogism 
proper, as he considers the conclusions of Induction to be only 
inferences evolved from a more universal major. — Aristotle recog- 
nises only a perfect Induction, i. e. an enumeration (actual or pre- 
sumed) of all the parts ; Whately only an imperfect, i. e. an enu- 
meration professedly only of some. — To Aristotle, Induction is a 
syllogism, apparently, of the third figure; to Whately, a syllogism 
of the first. — If Whately be right, Aristotle is fundamentally 
wrong ; wrong in admitting Inductive reasoning within the sphere 
of logic at all ; wrong in discriminating Induction from Syllogism 
proper ; wrong in all the particulars of the contrast. 

But that the Philosopher is not in error is evident at once ; 
whereas the Archbishop's doctrine is palpably suicidal. On that 
doctrine, the Inductive reasoning is " a syllogism in Barbara, the 
major premiss being always substantially the same : — What 
belongs to the individual or individuals we have examiru d f >>• longs 
to. the whole class under which they come." 

Now, we ask : — In what manner do we obtain this major % in tin 1 
evolution of which all Induction consists ? Here there are only 
four possible answers. — 1°, This proposition, (like the dictum <l 
omni et de nullo, and the axiom of the convertibility of the whole 
and its parts,) it may be said is (analytically) self-evident, it- 1 
tion implying a contradiction. This answer is manifestly false. 
For so far from being necessitated by the laws of thought, it is in 
opposition to them; the whole of the consequent Dot being d< 
mined in thought by the some of the antecedent — 2°, It may be 
said, to be acquired by Induction, This, however, would be 
absurd; inasmuch a> Induction itself is, ex hypothesi, <miv pos 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 167 

sible, through and after the principle it is thus adduced to con- 
struct. This of the proposition as a whole. The same is also true 
of its parts. " Class " is a notion, itself the result of an Induction ; 
it cannot, therefore, be postulated as a pre-requisite or element of 
that process itself. A similar remark applies to "property " — 
3°, It may be said to be deduced from a higher axiom. What 
then is such axiom ? That has not been declared. And if such 
existed, the same questions would remain to be answered regard- 
ing the higher proposition which are now required in relation to 
the lower. — 4°, It may be asserted to be (as Kant would say, 
synthetically) given as an ultimate principle of our intellectual 
constitution. This will not do. In the first place, if such principle 
exist, it only inclines, it does not necessitate. In the second, by 
appealing to it, we should transcend our science, confound the 
logical and formal with the metaphysical and material. In the 
third, we should thus attempt to prove a logical law from a psy- 
chological observation ; i. e. establish an a priori, a necessary 
science on a precarious experience, — an experience admitted per- 
haps by the disciples of Reid and Royer-Collard, but scouted by 
those of Gassendi and Locke.* 

Logicians, we already observed, have been guilty of a funda- 
mental error, in bringing the distinction of perfect and of imper- 
fect Induction within the sphere of their science, as this distinction 
proceeds on a material, consequently on an extralogical, difference. 
In this error, however, Dr Whately exceeds all other logicians, 
recognising, as he does, exclusively, that Induction, which is only 
precariously valid, and valid only through an extralogical presump- 
tion. This common major premise, if stated as necessary, is (for- 
mally and materially) false ; if stated as probable, it is (formally) 
illegitimate, even if not (materially) untrue, both because an infe- 
rior degree of certainty is incompatible with an apodictic science, 
and because the amount of certainty itself must, if not capriciously 
assumed, be borrowed from evidence dependent on material con- 
ditions beyond the purview of a formal science. 

Dr Whately is not less unfortunate in refuting the opinions 

* "It is by induction that all axioms are known, such as : — ' Things that 
are equal to the same are equal to one another ; ' ' A whole is greater than its 
parts;'' and all other mathematical axioms." Huyshe,^. 132. The same 
doctrine is held by Hill, p. 176. — Is such the Oxford Metaphysic ? [This 
doctrine, the ingenious author of "The Regeneration of Metaphysics " (pp. 
81, 104), charges also on Dr Whately.] 



168 LOGIC. 

of other logicians touching Induction, than in establishing his 
own. 

" In this process," he says, " we are employing a syllogism in Barbara 
with the major premiss suppressed ; not the minor, as Aldrich represents it. 
The instance he gives will sufficiently prove this : — ' This and that, and the 
other magnet, attract iron ; therefore so do all.' If this were, as he asserts, 
an enthymeme whose minor is suppressed, the only premise which we could 
supply to fill it up would be, ' all magnets are this, that, and the other ;' 
which is manifestly false." (P. 217.) 

Aldrich has faults sufficient of his own, without taking burden 
of the sins of others. He is here singly reprehended for saying 
only what, his critic seems not aware, had been said by all logi- 
cians before him. The suppressed minor premise even obtained 
in the schools the name of the Constantia ; and it was not until 
the time of Wolf* that a new-fangled doctrine, in this respect the 
same as Whately's, in some degree superseded the older and cor- 
recter theory. " In the example of Aldrich," says our author, 
" the suppressed minor premiss, ' all magnets are this, that, and 
the other/ is manifestly false" Why ? — Is it because the propo- 
sition affirms that a certain three magnets (" this, that, and the 
other") are all magnets? Even admitting this, the objection is 
null. The logician has a perfect right to suppose this or any 
other material falsity for an example ; all that is required of him 
is, that his syllogism should be formally correct. Logic only 
proves on the hypothetical truth of its antecedents. As Magen- 
tinus notices, Aristotle's example of Induction is physiologically 
false ; but it is not on that account a whit the worse as a dialec- 
tical illustration. The objection is wholly extra-logical. — But this 
is not, in fact, the meaning of the proposition. The words (in the 
original " hie, et ille, et iste magnes") are intended to denote 
every several magnet. Aldrich borrows the instance from San- 
derson, by whom it is also more fully expressed : — " Iste magnes 
trahit ferritin, et ille, et hie, et pariter se habet in reliquis." &c. 
— Perhaps, however, and this is the only other alternative, Dr 
Whately thinks the assumption " manifestly false." en the ground 
that no extent of observation could possibly be commensurate 
with " all magnets." This objection likewise lies beyond the 



[* I said generally " the time of Wolf;" for 1 recollected that some Ger- 
man logicians, prior to him, had held the same doctrine. It was however 
Wolfs authority which rendered the innovation general. — M. Peisse has 
here the following aote: — "The germ of this doctrine is to be found in I 

sendL (Inst. Log, Pars iii. canon 11. Opera, \. us. 1 ')] 



INDUCTIVE PROCESS. 169 

domain of the science. The logician, qua logician, knows nothing 
of material possibility and impossibility. To him all is possible 
that does not involve a contradiction in terms. At the same time, 
the present is merely the logical manner of wording the proposi- 
tion. The physical observer asserts on the analogy of his science, 
" This, that, the other magnet, &c, represent, all magnets ; " 
which the logician accepting, brings under the conditions, and 
translates into the language of his — ". This, that, the other mag- 
net, &c. are- all magnets," i. e. are conceived as constituting the 
whole — Magnet. 

Dr Whately's errors relative to Induction are, however, sur- 
passed by those of another able writer, Mr Hampden, in regard 
both to that process itself, and to the Aristotelic exposition of its 
nature ; — errors the more inconceivable, as he professes to have 
devoted peculiar attention to the subject, which he says, " de- 
serves a more particular notice, as throwing light on Aristotle's 
whole method of philosophising, while it shows how far he ap- 
proximated to the induction of modern philosophy." His words 
are : — 

" To obtain an accurate notion of the being of anything, we require a 
definition of it. A definition of the thing corresponds, in dialectic, with the 
essential notion of it in metaphysics. This abstract notion, then, accord- 
ing to Aristotle, constituting the true scientific view of a thing — and all the 
real knowledge consequently of the properties of the thing depending on the 
right limitation of this notion — some exact method of arriving at definitions 
which should express these limitations, and serve as the principles of 
sciences, became indispensable in such a system of philosophy. But in 
order to attain such definitions, a process of induction was required, — not 
merely an induction of that kind, which is only a peculiar form of syllogism, 
enumerating all the individuals implied in a class instead of the whole class 
collectively, but an induction of a philosophical character, and only differing 
from the induction of modern philosophy so far as it is employed about lan- 
guage. We shall endeavour to show this more fully. There are, then, two 
kinds of induction treated of by Aristotle. The first, that of simple enume- 
ration." — (After explaining with ordinary accuracy the first, in fact the only, 
species of induction, he proceeds :) — " But there is also a higher kind of 
induction employed by Aristotle, and pointed out by him expressly in its 
subserviency to the exact notions of things, by its leading to the right defini- 
tions of them in words. As it appears that words, in a dialectical point of 
view, are classes more or less comprehensive of observations on things, 
it is evident that we must gradually approximate towards a definition of 
any individual notion, by assigning class within class, until we have 
narrowed the extent of the expression as far as language will admit. 
(Analyt. Post. ii. c. 13, § 21.) The first definitions of any object are 
vague, founded on some obvious resemblance which it exhibits compared 



170 LOGIC. 

with other objects. This point of resemblance we abstract in thought, 
and it becomes, when expressed in language, a genus or class, under which 
we regard the object as included. A more attentive examination suggests to 
us less obvious points of resemblance between this object and some of those 
with which we had classed it before. Thus carrying on the analysis — and 
by the power of abstraction giving an independent existence to those succes- 
sive points of resemblance — we obtain subaltern genera or species, or subor- 
dinate classes included in that original class with which the process of 
abstraction commenced. As these several classifications are relative to each 
other, and dependent on the class with which we first commenced, the defi- 
nition of any notion requires a successive enumeration of the several classes 
in the line of abstraction, and hence is said technically to consist of genus 
and differentia ; the genus being the first abstraction, or class to which the 
object is first referred, and the differentia being the subordinate classes in 
the same line of abstraction. Now, the process by which we discover these 
successive genera, is strictly one of philosophical induction. As in the phi- 
losophy of nature in general, we take certain facts as the basis of enquiry, 
and proceed by rejection and exclusion of principles involved in the enquiry, 
until at last — there appearing no ground for further rejection — we conclude 
that we are in possession of the true principle of the object examined ; so, 
in the philosophy of language, we must proceed by a like rejection and ex- 
clusion of notions implied in the general term with which we set out, until 
we reach the very confines of that notion of it with which our enquiry is 
concerned. This exclusion is effected in language, by annexing to the gene- 
ral term denoting the class to which the object is primarily referred, other 
terms not including under them those other objects or notions to which the 
general term applies. For thus, whilst each successive term in the definition, 
in itself, extends to more than the object so defined, — yet all viewed together 
do not ; and this their relative bearing on the one point constitutes the being 
of the things. This i thus illustrated by Aristotle : — ' If we are enquiring,'' 
he says, ' what magnanimity is, we must consider the instances of certain 
magnanimous persons whom we know, what one thing they all have so far 
forth as they are such ; as, if Alcibiades was magnanimous, or Achilles, or 
Ajax ;— what one thing they all have ; say, impatience under insult ; for one 
made war, another raged, the other slew himself. Again, in the instances 
of others, as of Lysander or Socrates — if here it is, to be unaltered by prospe- 
rity or adversity ; — taking these two cases, I consider, what this apathy in 
regard to events, and impatience under insult, have the same in them. If, 
now, they have nothing the same, there must be two species of magnani- 
mity.' " (P. 513.) 

Mr Hampden afterwards states, inter alia, that the induction 
of Aristotle, " having for its object to determine accurately in 
words the notion of the being of things, proceeds, according to 
the nature of language, from the general, and ends in the parti- 
cular ; whereas the investigation of a law of nature proceeds from 
the particular, and ends in the general. Dialectical induction is 
synthetical, whilst philosophical induction is analytical in the 



INDUCTIVE PROCESS. 171 

result." On this ground, he explains the meaning of the term 
(eTcfyayy), and defends the Induction of Aristotle against its dis- 
paragement by Lord Bacon. 

We had imagined, that every compend of logic explained the 
two grand methods of Investigating the Definition ; but upon look- 
ing into the Oxford treatises on this science, we were surprised 
to find, that this, among other important matters, had in all of 
them been overlooked. This may, in part, enable us to surmise, 
how Mr Hampden could have so misconceived so elementary a 
point, as to have actually reversed the doctrine, not only of 
Aristotle, but of all other philosophers. A few words will be 
sufficient to illustrate the nature of the error. 

In the thirteenth chapter (Pacian division) of the second book of 
the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle treats of the manner of hunting 
out, as he terms it, the essential nature (to W Ian, quidditas) of a 
thing, the enunciation of which nature constitutes its definition. 
This may be attempted in two contrary ways. — By the one, we 
may descend from the category, or higher genus of the thing to 
be defined, dividing and subdividing, through the opposite differ- 
ences, till we reach the genus under which it is proximately 
contained ; and this last genus, along with the specific difference 
by which the genus is divided, will be the definition required. — 
By the other, we may ascend from the singulars, contained under 
the thing to be defined, (which is necessarily an universal,) by an 
exclusion of their differences, until we attain an attribution com- 
mon to them all, which attribution will supply the definition 
sought. — The former of these is, after Plato, called by Aristotle, 
and logicians in general, the method of Division; the higher 
genus being regarded as the (universal) whole, the subaltern 
genera and species as the (subject) parts into which it is divided. 
The extension here determines the totality. — The latter, which is 
described but not named by Aristotle, is variously denominated 
by his followers. Some, as his Greek commentators, taking the 
totality as determined by the comprehension, view the singulars 
as so many (essential) wholes, of "which the common attribute or 
definition is a part, and accordingly call this mode of hunting up 
the essence the Analytic ; others again, regarding the genus as 
the whole, the species and individuals as the parts, style it the 
Compositive, or Synthetic, or Collective;* while others, in fine, 

* " In one respect" says Aristotle, " the Genus is called a part of the 
Species ; in another, the Species a part of the Genus.'" (Metaph. L. v. c. 2o, 



172 LOGIC. 

looking simply to the order of the process itself, from the indi- 
vidual to the general, name it the Inductive. These last we shall 
imitate. 

Now, in the chapter referred to, Aristotle considers and con- 
trasts these two methods. — In regard to Division (§ 8 — 20) he 
shows on the one hand, (against Plato, who is not named,) that 
this process is not to be viewed as having any power of demon- 
stration or argument ; * and on the other, (against Speusippus, as 
we learn from Eudemus, through the Greek expositors), that it is 
not wholly to be rejected as worthless, being useful, in subser- 
vience always to the other method of induction, to ensure, — that 
none of the essential qualities are omitted, — that these qualities 
alone are taken, — and that they are properly subordinated and 
arranged. — In reference to the Inductive method, which is to be 
considered as the principal, he explains its nature, and delivers 
various precepts for its due application. (§ 7, 21, ets.) 

This summary will enable the reader to understand Mr Hamp- 
den's perversion of Aristotle's doctrine. — In the^?^ place : that 
gentleman is mistaken, in supposing that the philosopher applies 
the term Induction to any method of investigating the definition 
discussed by him in the chapter in question. The word does not 
once occur. — In the second place : he is still farther deceived, in 
thinking that Aristotle there bestows that name on a descent from 

t. 30. Compare Phys. L. iv. c. 5 (3) t. 23 ; and Porph. Intr. c. 3, § 39.) 
In like manner, the same method, viewed in different relations, may be 
styled either Analysis or Synthesis. This, however, has not been acknow- 
ledged ; nor has it even attracted notice, that different logicians and philo- 
sophers, though severally applying the terms only in a single sense, are still 
at cross purposes with each other. One calls Synthesis what another calls 
Analysis, — one calls Progression what another calls Regression ; and this both 
in ancient and modern times. We ourselves think it best to regulate the use 
of these terms by reference to the notion of a whole and parts, of any kind. 
This we do, and do professedly. Mr Hampden, but probably without in- 
tending it, does the same : in one part of the passage we have quoted, speak- 
ing of Division, (his logical induction,) as an " analysis; 1 ' in another, do- 
scribing it as " synthetical." [The total omission of the distinction of 
Comprehension and Extension (though this be the very turning point of 
logic), by former Oxford logicians, is remarkable in itself, and has been the 
cause, as is here exemplified, of much error and confusion. Dr Whately, 
indeed, not only overlooks the distinction, but he often reverses the language 
in which it is logically expressed.] 

* This he had elsewhere done; Pr, Analyt. 1. i. c. 31 Post. Anafyt. 1. ii.. e. 
5, et alibi. 



INDUCTION ; INVESTIGATION OF THE DEFINITION. 173 

the universal to the particular ; whereas in his philosophy — indeed 
in all philosophies — it exclusively pertains to an ascent from the 
particular to the universal. — In the third place : he is wrong, in 
imagining that Aristotle there treats only of a single method, for 
he considers and contrasts two methods, not only different, but 
opposed.* — In the fourth place : he is mistaken, in understanding, 
as applied to one contrary, the observations which Aristotle ap- 
plies, and which are only applicable, in expounding the reverse. 
For example : he quotes in the note, as pertinent to Division, 
words of the original relative to Induction ; and the instance (from 
the definition of Magnanimity) adduced to illucidate the one me- 
thod, is in reality employed by Aristotle to explain the other. — 
In the fifth place : his error is enhanced, by seeing in his own 
single method the subordinate of Aristotle's two ; and in lauding, 
as a peculiarly important part of the Aristotelic philosophy, a 
process in the exposition of which Aristotle has no claim to origi- 
nality, and to which he himself, here and elsewhere, justly attri- 
butes only an inferior importance. — In the sixth place : in contra- 
diction equally of his whole philosophy and of the truth of nature, 
the Stagirite is made to hold that our highest abstractions are 
first in the order of time ; that our process of classification is encen- 
tric, not eccentric ; that a child generalizes substance and accident 
before egg and white. 

Mr Hampden's statement of the Inductive method being thus 
the reverse of truth, it is needless to say that the etymolo- 
gical explanation he has hazarded of the term (in ay ay))) must 
be erroneous. — But even more erroneous is the pendant by 
which he attempts to illustrate his interpretation of that term. 
" The dKxyayvj, Abduction spoken of by Aristotle, (Anal. Prior, ii. 
c. 25,) is just the reverse, — a leading away, by the terms succes- 
sively brought from the more accurate notion conveyed by a 
former one." The Abduction, here referred to, is no more such a 

* Mr Hampden's error, we suspect, originates in the circumstance that 
Pacius (whom Duval follows in the Organon) speaks, in his analytic argu- 
ment of the chapter, of a methodus divisiva and a rnethodus inductiva ; and 
that Mr Hampden, using Duval's edition, in his extemporaneous study of 
the subject, not previously aware that there are two opposite methods of 
investigating the definition, took up the notion that these were merely a two- 
fold expression for the same thing. Mr Hampden is an able man : but to 
understand Aristotle in any of his works, he must be understood in all ; and 
to be understood in all, he must be long and patiently studied by a mind 
disciplined to speculation, and familiar with the literature of philosophy. 



174 LOGIC. 

" leading away" than it is a theft. It is a kind of syllogism — of 
what nature we cannot longer trespass on the patience of our 
readers by explaining. For the same reason we say nothing of 
some other errors we had remarked in Mr Hampden's account of 
that branch of the Aristotelic philosophy which we have been now 
considering. 



V.-DEAF AND DUMB. 

HISTORY OF THEIR INSTRUCTION, IN REFERENCE 
TO DALGARNO. 



(July, 1835.) 



The Works of George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen, 4to. Re- 
printed at Edinburgh : 1834. 

In taking up this work, we owe perhaps some apology for the 
deviation from our ordinary rules ; inasmuch as it is merely a 
reprint of ancient matter, the publication also not professedly 
reaching beyond the sphere of a private society, — the Maitland 
Club. We are induced, however, to make a qualified exception 
in favour of this edition of Dalgarno's Works, in consideration 
of the extreme rarity of the original treatises, added to their 
high importance ; and because the liberality of the editors, (Mr 
Henry Cockburn and Mr Thomas Maitland), has not limited their 
contribution merely to members of that society, but extended it 
to the principal libraries of the kingdom, and, we believe, to many 
individuals likely to feel an interest in its contents. We shall, 
however, relax our rule only to the measure of a very brief 
notice. 

Dalgarno's Works are composed of two treatises : the first 
entitled — " Ars Signorum, Vulgo Character Universalis et Lingua 
Philosophica. Londini : 1661 ;" the second — " Didascalocophus, 
or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor ; to which is added a Dis- 
course of the Nature and Number of Double Consonants : both 
which Tracts being the first (for what the Author knows) that 
have been published upon either of the subjects. Printed at the 
Theater in Oxford, 1680." 

Of the author himself, all that is now known is comprised in 



176 DEAF AND DUMB. 

the following slight notice by Anthony a Wood. " The reader 
may be pleased to know, that one George Dalgarno, a Scot, 
wrote a book entitled, Ars Signorum, fyc, London, 1661. This 
book, before it went to press, the author communicated to Dr 
Wilkins, who, from thence taking a hint of greater matter, car- 
ried it on, and brought it up to that which you see extant. This 
Dalgarno was born at Old Aberdeen, and bred in the University 
at New Aberdeen ; taught a private grammar school, with good 
success, for about thirty years together, in the parishes of S. 
Michael, and S. Mary Mag., in Oxford; wrote also Didasca- 
locophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor ; and dying of a 
fever, on the 28th of August, 1687, aged sixty or more, was 
buried in the north body of the Church of S. Mary Magdalen." 
(Atheno3 Oxon., Vol. II., p. 506.) With the exception of an 
accidental allusion to his treatise on Signs, by Leibnitz, in a letter 
to Mr Burnet of Kemney, from whom he had probably received 
that work of a fellow Aberdonian, and some slight traditionary 
statements by the German historians of literature, the memory of 
Dalgarno had wholly perished, when attention was again awakened 
to the originality and importance of his speculations by the late 
Mr Dugald Stewart, in various passages of his writings ; and these 
having suggested to the editors the idea of the present reprint, 
they are very properly collected in their preliminary statement, 
as the best of testimonies to its importance. 

In speaking of Dalgarno's two treatises, we shall reverse their 
chronological as well as natural order, and take them in what 
appears to us the order of their practical interest. 

To appreciate the high and peculiar value of our author's trea- 
tise on the education of the Deaf and Dumb, it is necessary to 
take a survey of what had actually been accomplished in this 
important department of applied psychology, previous to the 
appearance of his treatise. A regular history of this branch of 
education, with extracts from the writings of its earlier promoters, 
now in general extremely rare, would form an interesting present, 
both to the speculative and to the practical philosopher. In the 
total absence of such a work, we may be pardoned in throwing 
briefly together a few scattered notices, which have accidentally 
crossed us in the course of other inquiries. 

In deducing a history of the progress in the art of educating 
the deaf and dumb, there are certain separate points of accomplish- 
ment which it is proper to distinguish. Those are : 1°, The 



DALGARNO. 177 

teaching the pupil to understand, by the motions of the lips, &c, 
the speech of those around him ; 2°, To communicate his own 
thoughts in the articulate sounds of a language ; 3°, To read writ- 
ing ; 4°, To employ letters and words, denoted by certain conven- 
tional motions of the hand. 5°, There is, however, & fifth point, of 
still higher and more difficult accomplishment, and on which the 
easy, certain, and complete success of the whole attempt depends ; — 
that is, a determination of the psychological laws, by which the 
order and objects of instruction, under the condition of deafness, is 
regulated. 

As the result of a philosophical deduction, it was naturally to 
be expected, that the last of these should only be realised, after the 
possibility and conditions of the method in general had been em- 
pirically proved in the other four. In the present instance, how- 
ever, theory did not merely, follow practice, — it long prevented 
its application ; and the deaf and dumb had been actually taught 
the use of speech, before the philosophers would admit their capa- 
city of instruction. The dictum of Aristotle, that of all the senses, 
hearing contributes the most to intelligence and knowledge (sis 
(p^ovwrj n-hsloTov), was taken, apart from the qualifications under 
which that illustrious thinker advanced the proposition, (viz. that 
this was only by accident, inasmuch as hearing is the sense of 
sound, and sound contingently the vehicle of thought) ; and was 
alleged to prove, what was in fact the very converse of its true 
import, that the deaf are wholly incapable of intellectual instruc- 
tion. 

In like manner, a dogma of the physicians, which remounts we 
believe to Galen, that dumbness was not, as Aristotle had affirmed, 
in general a mere consequent of deafness, but the effect of a com- 
mon organic lesion of the lingual and auditory nerves, arising as 
they do from a neighbouring origin in the brain, — was generally 
admitted as conclusive against the possibility of a deaf person being 
taught to articulate sounds. It was, therefore, with great wonder 
and doubt, that the first examples of the falsehood of these assump- 
tions were received by the learned. The disabilities which the 
Roman law, and the older codes of every European jurisprudence, 
imposed on the deaf and dumb, were all founded in the principle, 
— " Surdus natus, mutus est et plane indisciplinabilisr as the great 
French jurist, Molinaeus expresses it. 

Rodolphus Agricola, who died in 1485, is the oldest testimony 
we recollect to a capacity in the deaf and dumb of an intelligent 

M 



178 DEAF AND DUMB. 

education ; and it is remarkable, that there is none older. In the 
last chapter of his posthumous work, De Inventione Dialectica, as 
an illustration of " the immense and almost incredible power of the 
human mind/' he instances " as little less than miraculous, what 
he himself had witnessed, — a person deaf from infancy, and conse- 
quently dumb, who had learned to understand writing, and, as if 
possessed of speech, was able to write down his whole thoughts." 
— Ludovicus Vives, some fifty years later, in his treatise De Anima 
(L. ii. c. De Discendi ratione), after noticing that Aristotle had 
justly styled the ear the organ of instruction, expresses his 
" wonder that there should have been a person born deaf and 
dumb who had learned letters : let the belief in this, rest with 
Rodolphus Agricola, who has recorded the fact, and affirmed that 
he himself beheld it." The countrymen of the unbelieving Vives 
were, however, destined, in the following generation, to be the 
inventors of the art in question. For — 

The oldest indication we have, of any systematic attempt at 
educating the deaf, is by Franciscus Vallesius, the celebrated 
Spanish physician, who, in his Philosophia Sacra, published in 
1590, mentions that " a friend of his, Petrus Pontius, a Benedic- 
tine monk, taught the deaf to speak by no other art than instruct- 
ing them first to write, then pointing out to them the objects sig- 
nified by the written characters, and finally guiding them to those 
motions of the tongue, &c, which correspond to the characters." 
What more is now accomplished? Petrus Pontius — who was a 
Spaniard, and not to be confounded with the celebrated Scotist, 
Joannes Poncius, Minorite, and native of Ireland — did not publish 
an account of his method. This, however, was done by John 
Paul Bonnet, of Arragon, secretary to the Constable of Castile, 
who, in 1620, printed, in Spanish, at Madrid, his Reduction of 
Letters, and Art of Instructing the Dumb. That this work of 
Bonnet contains only the practice of Pontius, is proved by the 
evidence of Perez in the book itself, and by that of Antonius in 
his Bibliotheca Hispanica. Of the signal success of the art in the 
hands of Pontius, (among others on two brothers and a sister of 
the Constable of Castile,) we have accounts by Antonius, by 
Morales ; and a very curious one by Sir Kenelm Digby. of 
what he himself saw in the younger brother of the Constable, 
when he accompanied Charles I., when Prince of "Wales, in his 
expedition into Spain, and to whom he appeals as a fellow-witness 
with himself. 



DALGARNO. 179 

" There was a nobleman of great quality that I knew in Spain, the younger 
brother of the Constable of Castile, who was taught to heare the sounds of 
words with his eyes (if that expression may be permitted). This Spanish 
Lord was born deafe, so deafe that if a gun were shot off close by his eare 
he could not heare it, and consequently he was dumbe ; for not being able to 
heare the sound of words, he could never imitate nor understand them : The 
lovelinesse of his face, and especially the exceeding life and spiritfulnesse of 
his eyes, and the comelinesse of his person, and the whole composure of his 
body throughout, were pregnant signes of a well-tempered mind within. 
And therefore all that knew him lamented much the want of meanes to cul- 
tivate it, and to embrue it with the notions, which it seemed to be capable 
of, in regard of itself, had it not been crossed by this unhappy accident, which 
to remedie physicians and chyrurgious had long employed their skill, but all 
in vaine. At the last there was a priest, who undertooke the teaching him 
to understand others when they spoke, and to speake himselfe that others 
might understand him, for which attempt at first he was laughed at, yet after 
some yeares he was looked upon as if he had wrought a miracle. In a word, 
after strange patience, constancie, and paines, he brought the young lord to 
speak as distinctly as any man whatsoever ; and to understand so perfectly 
what others said, that he would not lose a word in a whole dayes conversa- 
tion. I have often discoursed with the priest whilst I waited upon the Prince 
of Wales (now our gracious Sovereign) in Spain, and I doubt not but his 
Majesty remembreth all I have said of him, and much more : for his Majesty 
was very curious to observe, and enquire into the utmost of it. It is true, 
one great misbecomeingnesse he was apt to fall into, whilst he spoke : which 
was an uncertainty in the tone of his voyce, for not hearing the sound he 
made when he spoke, he could not steadily governe the pitch of his voyce, 
but it would be sometimes higher, and sometimes lower, though for the most 
part what he delivered together he ended in the same key as he began it. 
But when he had once suffered the passage of his voyce to close, at the open- 
ing it again, chance, or the measure of his earnestness to speak or reply, 
gave him his tone, w r hich he was not capable of moderating by such an arti- 
fice, as is recorded Caius Gracchus used, when passion in his orations to the 
people, drove out his voice with too great a vehemency or shrilnesse. He 
could discerne in another whether he spoke shrill or low; and he would repeat 
after any bodie any hard word whatsoever, which the Prince tried often, not 
only in Euglish, but by making some Welchmen that served his Highnesse 
speak words of then language, which he so perfectly ecchoed, that I confesse 
I wondered more at that than at all the rest, and his master himself would 
acknowledge that the rules of his art reached not to produce that effect with 
any certainty. And, therefore, concluded this in him must spring from other 
rules he had framed unto himselfe out of his own attentive observation ; 
which the advantages which nature had justly given him in the sharpnesse 
of senses to supply the want of this, endowed him with an ability and saga- 
city to do beyond any other man that had his hearing. He expressed it, 
surely, in a high measure by his so exact imitation of the Welch pronuncia- 
tion ; for that tongue (like the Hebrew) employeth much the guttural letters, 
and the motions of that part which frameth them cannot be seen or judged 
by the eye, otherwise than by the effect they may happily make by consent 



180 DEAF AND DUMB. 

in the other parts of the mouth exposed to view. For the knowledge he had 
of what they said sprung from his observing the motions they made, so that 
he could converse currently in the light, though they he talked with whis- 
pered never so softly. And I have seen him at the distance of a large cham- 
ber's breadth say words after one, that I standing close by the speaker could 
not hear a syllable of. But if he were in the darke, or if one turned his face 
out of his sight, he was capable of nothing one said." — (Treatise of Bodies.) 

The prejudice was now dispelled, that the deaf and dumb were 
incapable of education ; and during the course of the seventeenth 
century, many examples are recorded of their successful instruc- 
tion without even the aid of a teacher experienced in the art. 

Though nothing can be clearer than the right of Spain to the 
original invention of this art in all its branches, we, however, find 
it claimed, at a much later period, and in the same year, (1670), 
by Lana, the Italian Jesuit, in his Prodromo ; and for Dr John 
Wallis, Professor of Geometry in Oxford, in the Transactions of 
the lloyal Society of London. The precepts # of the former are 
neither new nor important ; and the latter can only vindicate his 
originality by an ignorance of what had previously been effected. 
Wallis appears to have long (that is, before the appearance of Dal- 
garno's work) applied himself mainly to the comparatively unim- 
portant point of enabling the deaf to enunciate words. Without 
undervaluing the merit of his treatise on the nature and pronun- 
ciation of letters, in the introduction to his English grammar, or 
the success of his principles in enabling the deaf to speak, — all this 
had been previously done by others with equal ability and success. 
The nature of letters, the organic modifications for the production 
of the various vocal sounds, had been investigated by Fabrkius ab 
Aquapendente in his treatise De Locutione ; and thereafter with 
remarkable accuracy and minuteness by P. Montanus in his 
Account of a New Art called the Art of Speech, published in Hol- 
land many years prior to the grammar of Dr Wallis ; — while Bon- 
net, in the work already mentioned, had, in the first book, treated 
" of the nature of letters and their pronunciation among different 
nations," and in the second, "show r ed how the mute maybe taught 
the figure and pronunciation of letters by manual demonstration, 
and the motion of the mouth and lips." — Wallis's originality can 
indeed hardly be maintained in relation even to English writers. 

To say nothing of Lord Bacons recommendation of " the 
motions of the tongue, lips, throat, palate, &c, which go to the 
making up of the several letters, as a subject worthy of inquiry," 
John Bulwer had, in the year 1648, published his curious trea- 



DALGARNO. 181 

tise, entitled, — " Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man's 
Friend, exhibiting the philosophical verity of that subtile art, which 
may inable one with an observant eie, to heare what any man speaks 
by the moving of his lips. Upon the same ground, with the advan- 
tage of an historical exemplification, apparently proving, that a 
man borne deafe and dumbe, may be taught to heare the sounds of 
■words with his eie, and thence learn to speak with his tongue. By 
J. B. sirnamed the Chirosopher. London, 1648." 

Bulwer appears to have been ignorant of Bonnet's book, but 
he records many remarkable cases, several within his own expe- 
rience, of what had been accomplished for the education of the 
deaf. He was the first also to recommend the institution of "an 
academy of the mute," and to notice the capacity which deaf 
persons usually possess of enjoying music through the medium of 
the teeth — a fact which has latterly been turned to excellent 
account, especially in Germany ; and there principally by Father 
Robertson, a monk of the Scots College of Ratisbon, by whose 
exertions a new source of instruction and enjoyment has thus 
been opened up to those otherwise insensible to sounds. It is 
remarkable that Bulwer, who had previously written a work 
on " Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand," and 
who had thence even obtained the surname of the Chirosopher, 
should have suggested nothing in regard to a method of speaking 
on the fingers ; and it is still more singular that his attention was 
not called to this device, as he himself has mentioned a remark- 
able case in which it had been actually applied. " A pregnant 
example," he says, " of the officious nature of the touch, in sup- 
plying the defect or temporall incapacity of the other senses, we 
have in one Master Babington, of Burntwood, in the county of 
Essex, an ingenious gentleman, who, through some sicknesse, 
becoming deaf, doth, notwithstanding, feele words, and, as if he 
had an eye in his finger, sees signes in the darke ; whose wife dis- 
coursed very perfectly with him by a strange way of arthrologie, 
or alphabet, contrived on the joynts of his fingers, who, taking 
him by the hand in the night, can so discourse with him very 
exactly ; for he feeling the joynts which she toucheth for letters, 
by them collected into words, very readily conceives what she 
would suggest to him." (P. 106.) 

We pass over Holder's " Elements of Speech. An Essay of 
Inquiry into the Natural Production of Letters, with an Appendix 
to instruct Persons Deaf and Dumb;" and Sibscote J s " Deaf and 



182 DEAF AND DUMB. 

Dumb Man's Discourse" which were published in the interval 
between Wallis's practical application of his method and the 
appearance of Dalgarno's book. Dalgarno, we believe, may 
claim the merit of having first exhibited, and that in its most per- 
fect form, a finger alphabet. He makes no pretensions, however, 
to the original conception of such a medium of communication. 
But the great and distinctive merit of his treatise is not so much, 
that it improved the mechanism of instruction, as that it corrected 
the errors of his predecessors, and pointed out the principles on 
which the art is founded, and by the observance of which alone 
it can be carried to perfection. As we first attempt to fix and 
communicate our notions by the aid of speech, it was a natural 
prejudice to believe that sounds were the necessary instrument of 
thought and its expression. The earlier instructors of the deaf 
and dumb were thus led to direct their principal effort to the 
teaching their pupils to distinguish the different mechanical move- 
ments by which different sounds are produced, and to imitate 
these sounds by imitating the organic modification on which they 
depend. They did not consider that still there existed no sound 
for the deaf; that the signs to which they thus attached ideas 
were only perceptions of sight and feeling; that these were, on 
the one hand, minute, ambiguous, fugitive, and, on the other, 
difficult ; and that it would be better to associate thought with a 
system of signs more easy to produce, and less liable to be mis- 
taken. The honour of first educating the deaf and dumb in the 
general principles of grammar, and in primarily associating their 
thought with written instead of with spoken symbols, is generally 
claimed for the eighteenth century, France, and the Abbe de 
VEpee. All this was, however, fully demonstrated a century 
before in the forgotten treatise of our countryman, as in a great 
measure also practised by Pontius, the original inventor of the 
art, a century before Dalgarno. We are indebted, as we formerly 
observed, to Mr Duo-aid Stewart for rescuing the name of Dal- 
garno from the oblivion into which it had fallen ; and the follow- 
ing quotation from that distinguished philosopher affords the mo*t 
competent illustration of his merits : — 

" After having thus paid the tribute of my sincere respect to the enlight- 
ened and benevolent exertions of a celebrated foreigner (Sicard), I feel 
myself called on to lay hold of the only opportunity that may occur to me 
of rescuing from oblivion the name of a Scottish writer, whose merits have 
been strangely overlooked, both by his contemporaries and by his succee 
The person I allude to is George Dalgarno. who. more than a hundred and 



DALGARNO. 1H3 

thirty years ago, was led, by his own sagacity, to adopt, a priori, the same 
general conclusion concerning the education of the dumb, of which the expe- 
rimental discovery, and the happy application, have, in our times, reflected 
such merited lustre on the name of Sicard. I mentioned Dalgarno formerly, 
in a note annexed to the first volume of the ' Philosophy of the Human Mind," 1 
as the author of a very iugenious tract, entitled ' Ars SignorumJ from which 
it appears indisputably that he was the precursor of Bishop Wilkins in his 
speculations concerning a real character and a philosophical language ; and 
it now appears to me equally clear, upon a further acquaintance with the 
short fragments which he has left behind him, that, if he did not lead the 
way to the attempt made by Dr Wallis to teach the dumb to speak, he had 
conceived views with respect to the means of instructing them, far more pro- 
found and comprehensive than any we meet with in the works of that 
learned writer prior to the date of Dalgarno's publications. On his claims 
in these two instances, I forbear to enlarge at present ; but I cannot deny 
myself the satisfaction of transcribing a few paragraphs in justification of 
what I have already stated with respect to the remarkable coincidence 
between some of his theoretical deductions, and the practical results of the 
French Academician. 

'"I conceive there* might be successful addresses made to a dumb child, 
even in its cradle, when he begins risu cognoscere matrem, if the mother or 
nurse had but as nimble a hand, as commonly they have a tongue. For 
instance, I doubt not but the words hand, foot, dog, cat, hat, &c, written fair, 
and as often presented to the deaf child's eye, pointing from the words to 
the things, and vice versa, as the blind child hears them spoken, would be 
known and remembered as soon by the one as the other ; and as I think the 
eye to be as docile as the ear, so neither see I any reason but the hand might 
be made as tractable an organ as the tongue, and as soon brought to form, 
if not fair, at least legible characters, as the tongue to imitate and echo back 
articulate sounds.' ' The difficulties of learning to read on the common plan, 
are so great, that one may justly wonder how young ones come to get over 
them. Now, the deaf child, under his mother's tuition, passes securely by 
all these rocks and quicksands. The distinction of letters, their names, 
their powers, their order, the dividing words into syllables, and of them again 
making words, to which may be added tone and accent — none of these 
puzzling niceties hinder his progress. It is true, after he has passed the 
discipline of the nursery, and comes to learn grammatically, then he must 
begin to learn to know letters written, by their figures, number, and order.' 

" The same author elsewhere observes, that ' the soul can exert her 
powers by the ministry of any of the senses ; and therefore, when she is 
deprived of her principal secretaries, the eye and ear, then she must be con- 
tented with the service of her lackeys and scullions, the other senses ; which 
are no less true and faithful to their mistress than the eye and the ear, but 
not so quick for despatch.' 

" I shall only add one other sentence, from which my readers will be 
enabled, without any comment of mine, to perceive with what sagacity and 
success this very original thinker had anticipated some of the most refined 
experimental conclusions of a more enlightened age. 

" ' My design is not to give a methodical system of grammatical rules, but 



184 DEAF AND DUMB. 

only such general directions, whereby an industrious tutor may bring his 
deaf pupil to the vulgar use and or/ of a language, that so he may be the 
more capable of receiving instruction in the B/6V/, from the rules of grammar, 
when his judgment is ripe for that study ; or, more plainly, I intend to bring 
the way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near as possible to that 
of teaching young ones to speak and understand their mother-tongue.' 

" In prosecution of this general idea, he has treated, in one very short 
chapter, of A Deaf Man's Dictionary, and in another of A Grammar for Deaf 
Persons, both of them containing (under the disadvantages of a style 
uncommonly pedantic and quaint) a variety of precious hints, from which, if 
I do not deceive myself, useful practical lights might be derived, not only by 
such as may undertake the instruction of such pupils, as Mitchell or Massieu, 
but by all who have any concern in the tuition of children during the first 
stage of their education. 

" That Dalgarno's suggestions with respect to the education of the dumb, 
were not altogether useless to Dr Wallis, will, I think, be readily admitted 
by those who take the trouble to compare his letter to Mr Beverley (pub- 
lished eighteen years after Dalgarno's treatise) with his Tractatus deLoquela, 
published in 1 653. In this letter, some valuable remarks are to be found on 
the method of leading the dumb to the signification of words ; and yet the 
name of Dalgarno is not once mentioned to his correspondent." 

We may add, that Mr Stewart is far more lenient than Dr 
Wallis' disingenuity merited. Wallis, in his letter to Mr Bever- 
ley, has plundered Dalgarno, even to his finger alphabet. It is 
no excuse, though it may in part account for the omission of Dal- 
garno's name, that Dalgarno, whilst he made little account in 
general of the teaching of the deaf and dumb to speak, had, in 
his chapter on the subject, passed over in total silence the very 
remarkable exploits in this department of " the learned and my 
worthy friend Dr Wallis," as he elsewhere styles him. On this 
subject, indeed, it seems to have been fated, that every writer 
should either be ignorant of, or should ignore, his predecessors. 
Bulwer, Lana, and Wallis, each professed himself original ; Dal- 
garno entitles his Didascalocaphus " the first, (for what the author 
knows) that had been published on the subject ; " and Amman, 
whose Surdus Loquens appeared only in 1692, makes solemn oath. 
" that he had found no vestige of a similar attempt in any pre- 
vious writer." 

The length to which these observations have run on the 77*/- 
locophus, would preclude our entering on the subject of the other 
treatise — the Ars Signonon, were this not otherwise impossible 
within the limits of the present notice. But indeed the most 
genera] statement of the problem of an universal character, and 
pf the various attempts made for its solution, rould hardly be 



DALGARNO. 185 

comprised within the longest article. At the same time, regard- 
ing as we do the plan of a philosophical language, as a curious 
theoretical idea, but one which can never be practically realized, 
our interest in the several essays is principally limited to the in- 
genuity manifested by the authors, and to the minor philosophi- 
cal truths incidentally developed in the course of these discus- 
sions. Of such, the treatise of Dalgarno is not barren ; but that 
which principally struck us, is his remarkable anticipation, on 
speculative grounds, a priori, of what has been now articulately 
proved, a posteriori, by the Dutch philologers and Home Tooke, 
(to say nothing of the ancients), — that the parts of speech are all 
reducible to the noun and verb, or to the noun alone. 



VL-IDEALISM. 

WITH REFERENCE TO THE SCHEME OF ARTHUR COLLIER. 



(April, 1839.) 

1. Metaphysical Tracts by English Philosophers of the Eighteenth 
Century. Prepared for the Press by the late Rev. Samuel 
Parr, D.D. 8vo. London : 1837. 

2. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Arthur Collier, 
M.A., Hector of Langford Magna, in the County of Wilts. 
From A.D. 1704, to A.D. 1732. With some Account of his 
Family. By Robert Benson, M.A. 8vo. London : 1837. 

We deem it our duty to call attention to these 'publications : 
for in themselves they are eminently deserving of the notice of 
the few who in this country take an interest in those higher spe- 
culations to which, in other countries, the name of Philosophy is 
exclusively conceded ; and, at the same time, they have not been 
ushered into the world with those adventitious recommendations 
which might secure their intrinsic merit against neglect. 

The fortune of the first is curious. — It is known to those who 
have made an active study of philosophy and its history, that 
there are many philosophical treatises written by English authors. 
— in whole or in part of great value, but, at the same time, of ex- 
treme rarity. Of these, the rarest are, in fact, frequently the 
most original : for precisely in proportion as an author is in ad- 
vance of his age, is it likely that his works will be neglected ; and 
the neglect of contemporaries in general consigns a book, — espe- 
cially a small book, — if not protected by accidental concomitants, at 
once to the tobacconist or tallow-chandler. This is more particu- 
larly the case with pamphlets, philosophical, and at the same 
time polemical. Of these we are acquainted with some, extant 
perhaps only in one or two copies, which display a metaphysical 



ENGLISH INDIFFERENCE TO PHILOSOPHY. 187 

talent unappreciated in a former age, but which would command 
the admiration of the present. Nay, even of English philoso- 
phers of the very highest note, (strange to say !) there are now 
actually lying unknown to their editors, biographers, and fellow- 
metaphysicians, published treatises, of the highest interest and 
importance ; [as of Cudworth, Berkeley, Collins, &c] 

We have often, therefore, thought that, were there with us a 
public disposed to indemnify the cost of such a publication, a col- 
lection, partly of treatises, partly of extracts from treatises, by 
English metaphysical writers, of rarity and merit, would be one 
of no inconsiderable importance. In any other country than 
Britain, such a publication would be of no risk or difficulty. Al- 
most every nation of Europe, except our own, has, in fact, at 
present similar collections in progress — only incomparably more 
ambitious. Among others, there are in Germany the Corpus 
Philosophorum, by Gfroerer ; in France, the Bibliotheque Philo- 
sophique des Temps Modemes, by Bouillet and Gamier ; and in 
Italy, the Collezione de' Classici Metafisici, &c. Nay, in this 
country itself, we have publishing societies for every department 
of forgotten literature — except Philosophy. 

But in Britain, which does not even possess an annotated edi- 
tion of Locke, — in England, where the universities teach the 
little philosophy they still nominally attempt, like the catechism, 
by rote, what encouragement could such an enterprise obtain ? 
It did not, therefore, surprise us, when we learnt that the pub- 
lisher of the two works under review, — when he essayed what, 
in the language of " the trade " is called " to subscribe " The 
Metaphysical Tracts, found his brother booksellers indisposed to 
venture even on a single copy. — Now, what was the work which 
our literary purveyors thus eschewed as wormwood to British 
taste ? 

The late Dr Parr, whose erudition was as unexclusive as pro- 
found, had, many years previous to his death, formed the plan of 
reprinting a series of the rarer metaphysical treatises, of English 
authorship, which his remarkable library contained. With this 
view, he had actually thrown off a small impression of five such 
tracts, with an abridgement of a sixth ; but as these probably 
formed only a part of his intended collection, which, at the same 
time, it is known he meant to have prefaced by an introduction, 
containing, among other matters, an historical disquisition on 
Idealism, with special reference to the philosophy of Collier, the 



188 IDEALISM. 

publication was from time to time delayed, until its completion 
was finally frustrated by his death. When his library was subse- 
quently sold, the impression of the six treatises was purchased 
by Mr Lumley, a respectable London bookseller ; and by him 
has recently been published under the title which stands as 
Number First at the head of this article. 

The treatises reprinted in this collection are the following : — 

"1. Clavis Universalis ; or a new Inquiry after Truth: being a demonstra- 
tion of the non-existence or impossibility of an external world. By Arthur 
Collier, Rector of Langford Magna, near Sarum. London : 1713. 

2. A specimen of True Philosophy ; in a discourse on Genesis, the first 
chapter and the first verse. By Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford Magna, 
near Sarum, Wilts. Not improper to be bound up with his Clavis Universalis. 
Sarum : 1730. 

3. (An abridgement, by Dr Pan-, of the doctrines maintained by Collier 
in his) Logology, or Treatise on the Logos, in seven sermons on John 1. 
verses 1, 2, 3, 14, together with an Appendix on the same subject. 1732. 

4. Conjectures qucedam de Sensu, Motu, et Idearum generatione. (This was 
first published by David Hartley as an appendix to his Epistolary Disser- 
tation, De Lithontriptico a J. Stephens nuper invento (Leyden, 1741, Bath, 
1746) ; and contains the principles of that psychological theory which he 
afterwards so fully developed in his observations on Man.) 

5. An Inquiry into the Origin of the Human Appetites and Affections, allow- 
ing how each arises from Association, with an account of the entrance of Moral 
Evil into the world. To which are added some remarks on the independent 
scheme which deduces all obligation on God's part and man's from certain 
abstract relations, truth, &c. Written for the use of the young gentlemen 
at the Universities. Lincoln : 1747. (The author is yet unknown.) 

6. Man in quest of himself ; or a defence of the Individuality of the Human 
Mind, or Self Occasioned by some remarks in the Monthly Review for 
July 1763, on a note in Search's Freewill. By Cuthbert Comment, Gent. 
London : 1763. (The author of this is Search himself, that is, Mr Abraham 
Tucker.)" 

These tracts are undoubtedly well worthy of notice ; but to the 
first — the Clavis Universalis of Collier — as by far the most in- 
teresting and important, we shall at present confine the few obser- 
vations which we can afford space to make.* 

This treatise is in fact one not a little remarkable in the his- 
tory of philosophy ; for to Collier along with Berkeley is due the 
honour of having first explicitly maintained a theory of Absolute 
Idealism ; and the Clavis is the work in which that theory i> 
developed. The fortune of this treatise, especially in its own 

* [ft never rains hut if pours. Collier's Clavis was subsequently reprint- 
ed, in a very handsome form, by a literary association in Edinburgh. Would 
that the books wanting reimpression, were first dealt with!] 



FATE OF THE CLAVIS UNIVERSALIS. 189 

country, has been very different from its deserts. Though the 
negation of an external world had been incidentally advanced by 
Berkeley in his Principles of Hitman Knowledge some three 
years prior to the appearance of the Clavis Universalis, with 
which the publication of his Dialogues between Hylas and Philo- 
nous was simultaneous ; it is certain that Collier was not only 
wholly unacquainted with Berkeley's speculations, but had de- 
layed promulgating his opinion till after a ten years' meditation. 
Both philosophers are thus equally original. They are also nearly 
on a level in scientific talent ; for, comparing the treatise of 
Collier with the writings of Berkeley, we find it little inferior in 
metaphysical acuteness or force of reasoning, however deficient it 
may be in the graces of composition, and the variety of illustra- 
tion, by which the works of his more accomplished rival are dis- 
tinguished. But how disproportioned to their relative merits has 
been the reputation of the two philosophers ! While Berkeley's 
became a name memorable throughout Europe, that of Collier was 
utterly forgotten : — it appears in no British biography ; and is 
not found even on the list of local authors in the elaborate history 
of the county where he was born, and of the parish where he was 
hereditary Rector ! Indeed, but for the notice of the Clavis by 
Dr Reid (who appears to have stumbled on it in the College 
Library of Glasgow), it is probable that the name of Collier would 
have remained in his own country absolutely unknown — until, 
perhaps, our attention might have been called to his remarkable 
writings, by the consideration they had by accident obtained from 
the philosophers of other countries. In England the Clavis Uni- 
versalis was printed, but there it can hardly be said to have been 
published; for it there never attracted the slightest observa- 
tion ; and of the copies now known to be extant of the original 
edition, 

" numerus vix est totidem, quot 

Thebarum portce vel divitis ostia Niti." 

The public libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, as Mr Benson 
observes, do not possess a single copy. There are, however, 
two in Edinburgh ; and in Glasgow, as we have noticed, there is 
another. 

The only country in which the Clavis can truly be said to have 
been hitherto published is Germany. 

In the sixth supplemental volume of the Acta Eruditorum 



190 IDEALISM. 

(1717) there is a copious and able abstract of its contents. 
Through this abridgement the speculations of Collier became 
known — particularly to the German philosophers; and we re- 
collect to have seen them quoted, among others, by Wolf and 
Bilfinger. 

In 1756 the work was, however, translated, without retrench- 
ment, into German, by Professor Eschenbach of Rostock, along 
with Berkeley's Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. These 
two treatises constitute his " Collection of the most distinguished 
Writers who deny the reality of their own body and of the whole 
corporeal world," — treatises which he accompanied with " Coun- 
ter observations, and an Appendix, in which the existence of mat- 
ter is demonstrated : " These are of considerable value. [I have 
spoken of them, in Stewart's Dissertation, Note SS.] Speaking 
of Collier's treatise, the translator tells us : — " If any book ever 
cost me trouble to obtain it, the Clavis is that book. Every ex- 
ertion was fruitless. At length, an esteemed friend, Mr J. Selk, 
candidate of theology in Dantzic, sent me the work, after I had 

abandoned all hope of ever being able to procure it 

The preface is wanting in the copy thus obtained — a proof that it 
was rummaged, with difficulty, out of some old book magazine. 
It has not, therefore, been in my power to present it to the curi- 
ous reader, but I trust the loss may not be of any great import- 
ance." — In regard to the preface, Dr Eschenbach is, however, 
mistaken ; the original has none. 

By this translation, which has now itself become rare, the work 
was rendered fully accessible in Germany ; and the philosophers 
of that country did not fail to accord to its author the honour due 
to his metaphysical talent and originality. The best comparative 
view of the kindred doctrines of Collier and Berkeley is indeed 
given by Tennemann (xi. 399, sq.) ; whose meritorious History 
of Philosophy, we may observe, does justice to more than one 
English thinker, whose works, and even whose name, are in his 
own country as if they had never been ! 

Dr Reid's notice of the Clavis attracted the attention of Mr 
Dugald Stewart and of Dr Parr to the work; and to the nominal 
celebrity which, through them, its author has thus tardily attain- 
ed, even in Britain, are we indebted for Mr Benson's interesting 
Memohs of the Life and Writings of Arthur Collier : forming the 
second of the two publications prefixed to this article. What was 



COLLIER'S BIOGRAPHY. 191 

his inducement and what his means for the execution of this task, 
the biographer thus informs us. 

vF tP vF IF t^F vfc 

Arthur Collier was born in 1680. He was the son of Arthur 
Collier, Rector of Langford-Magna, in the neighbourhood of Salis- 
bury — a living, the advowson of which had for about a century 
been in possession of the family, and of which his great-grand- 
father, grandfather, father, and himself, were successively incum- 
bents. With his younger brother, William, who was also destined 
for the Church, and who obtained an adjoining benefice, he re- 
ceived his earlier education in the grammar-school of Salisbury. 
In 1697 he was entered of Pembroke College, Oxford ; but in 
the following year, when his brother joined him at the University, 
they both became members of Balliol. His father having died 
in 1697, the family living was held by a substitute until 1704, 
when Arthur, having taken priest's orders, was inducted into the 
Rectory, on the presentation of his mother. In 1707 he married 
a niece of Sir Stephen Fox ; and died in 1732, leaving his wife, 
with two sons and two daughters, in embarrassed circumstances. 
Of the sons : — Arthur became a civilian of some note at the Com- 
mons ; and Charles rose in the army to the rank of Colonel. Of 
the daughters : — Jane was the clever authoress of The Art of In- 
geniously Tormenting ; and Mary obtained some celebrity from 
having accompanied Fielding, as his wife's friend, in the voyage 
which he made in quest of health to Lisbon. Collier's family is 
now believed to be extinct. 

Besides the Clavis Universalis (1713), The Specimen of True 
Philosophy (1730), and the Logology (1732), Collier was the 
author of two published Sermons on controversial points, which 
have not been recovered. Of his manuscript works the remains 
are still considerable, but it is probable that the greater propor- 
tion has perished. Our author was hardly less independent in his 
religious, than in his philosophical, speculations. In the latter he 
was an Idealist ; in the former, an Arian (like Clarke,) — an Apol- 
linarian, — and a High Churchman, on grounds which high church- 
men could not understand. Of Collier as a parish priest and a 
theologian, Mr Benson supplies us with much interesting informa- 
tion. But it is only as a metaphysician that we at present consider 
him ; and in this respect the Memoirs form a valuable supplement 
to the Clavis. Besides a series of letters in exposition of his phi- 
losophical system, they aiford us, what is even more important, 



192 IDEALISM. 

an insight into the course of study by which Collier was led to 
his conclusion. With philosophical literature he does not appear 
to have been at all extensively conversant. His writings betray 
no intimate acquaintance with the works of the great thinkers of 
antiquity ; and the compends of the German Scheiblerus and of the 
Scottish Baronius, apparently supplied him with all that he knew 
of the Metaphysic of the Schools. Locke is never once alluded 
to. Descartes and Mallebranche, and his neighbour Mr Norris, 
were the philosophers whom he seems principally to have studied ; 
and their works, taken by themselves, were precisely those best 
adapted to conduct an untrammelled mind of originality and bold- 
ness to the result at which he actually arrived. 

Without entering on any general consideration of the doctrine 
of Idealism, or attempting a regular analysis of the argument of 
Collier, we hazard a few remarks on that theory, — simply with 
the view of calling attention to some of the peculiar merits of our 
author. 

Mankind in general believe that an external world exists, only 
because they believe that they immediately know it as existent. 
As they believe that they themselves exist because conscious of a 
self or ego ; so they believe that something different from them- 
selves exists, because they believe that they are also conscious of 
this not-self or non-ego. 

In the first place, then, it is self-evident, that the existence of 
the external world cannot be doubted, if we admit that we do, as 
we naturally believe we do, — know it immediately as existent. If 
the fact of the knoivledge be allowed, the fact of the existence can- 
not be gainsaid. The former involves the latter. 

But, in the second place, it is hardly less manifest, that if our 
natural belief in the knowledge of the existence of an external 
world be disallowed as false, that our natural belief in the exist- 
ence of such a world can no longer be founded on as true. Yet, 
marvellous to say, this has been very generally done. 

For reasons to which we cannot at present advert, it has been 
almost universally denied by philosophers, that in sensitive per- 
ception we are conscious of any external reality. On the contrary, 
they have maintained, with singular unanimity, that what we are 
immediately cognitive of in that act, is only an ideal object in the 
mind itself. In so far as they agree in holding this opinion, phi- 
losophers may be called Idealists in contrast to mankind in general. 



IDEALISM IN GENERAL. 193 

and a few stray speculators who may be called Realists — Natural 
Realists. 

In regard to the relation or import of this ideal object, philoso- 
phers are divided ; and this division constitutes two great and 
opposing opinions in philosophy. On the one hand, the majority 
have maintained that the ideal object of which the mind is consci- 
ous, is vicarious or representative of a real object, unknown im- 
mediately, or as existing, and known only mediately through this 
its ideal substitute. These philosophers, thus holding the exist- 
ence of an external world — a world, however, unknown in itself, 
and therefore asserted only as an hypothesis, may be appropri- 
ately styled Cosmothetic Idealists — Hypothetical or Assumptive 
Realists. On the other hand, a minority maintain, that the ideal 
object has no external prototype ; and they accordingly deny 
the existence of any external world. These may be denominated 
the Absolute Idealists. 

Each of these great genera of Idealists is, however, divided 
and subdivided into various subordinate species. 

The Cosmothetic Idealists fall primarily into two classes, inas- 
much as some view the ideal or representative object to be a 
tertium quid different from the percipient mind as from the 
represented object ; while others regard it as only a modification 
of the mind itself, — as only the percipient act considered as repre- 
sentative of, or relative to, the supposed external reality. The 
former of these classes is again variously subdivided, according 
as theories may differ in regard to the nature and origin of the 
vicarious object ; as whether it be material or immaterial, — whe- 
ther it come from without or rise from within, — whether it ema- 
nate from the external reality or from a higher source, — whether 
it be infused by God or other hyperphysical intelligences, or whe- 
ther it be a representation in the Deity himself, — whether it be 
innate, or whether it be produced by the mind, on occasion of 
the presence of the material object within the sphere of sense, 
&c. &c. 

Of Absolute Idealism only two principal species are possible ; 
at least, only two have been actually manifested in the history of 
philosophy ; — the Theistic and the Egoistic. The former sup- 
poses that the Deity presents to the mind the appearances which 
we are determined to mistake for an external world ; the latter 
supposes that these appearances are manifested to consciousness, 
in conformity to certain unknown laws, by the mind itself. The 

N 



194 IDEALISM. 

Theistic Idealism is again subdivided into three; according as 
God is supposed to exhibit the phenomena in question in his own 
substance, — to infuse into the percipient mind representative 
entities different from its own modification, — or to determine the 
ego itself to an illusive representation of the non-ego* 

Now it is easily shown, that if the doctrine of Natural Realism 
be abandoned, — if it be admitted, or proved, that we are deceived 
in our belief of an immediate knowledge of aught beyond the 
mind; then Absolute Idealism is a conclusion philosophically 
inevitable, the assumption of an external world being now an 
assumption which no necessity legitimates, and which is therefore 
philosophically inadmissible. On the law of parsimony it must 
be presumed null. 

It is, however, historically true, that Natural Realism had been 
long abandoned by philosophers for Cosmothetic Idealism, before 
the grounds on which this latter doctrine rests were shown to be 
unsound. These grounds are principally the following : — 

1.) — In the first place, the natural belief in the existence of an 
external world was allowed to operate even when the natural 
belief of our immediate knowledge of such a world was argued 
to be false. It might be thought that philosophers, when they 
maintained that one original belief was illusive, would not con- 
tend that another was veracious, — still less that they would 
assume, as true, a belief which existed only as the result of a 
belief which they assumed to be false. But this they did. The 
Cosmothetic Idealists, all deny the validity of our natural belief 
in our knowledge of the existence of external things ; but we 
find the majority of them, at the same time, maintaining that such 
existence must be admitted on the authority of our natural belief 
of its reality. And yet, the latter belief exists only in and through 
the former ; and if the former be held false, it is, therefore, of 
all absurdities the greatest to view the latter as true. Thus 
Descartes, after arguing that mankind are universally deluded 
in their conviction that they have any immediate knowledge of 
aught beyond the modifications of their own minds ; again argues 
that the existence of an external world must be admitted. — 
because, if it do not exist, God deceives, in impressing on us a 
belief in its reality ; but God is no deceiver ; therefore, &c. This 

* [For a more detailed view of these distinctions, see Diss, on lleid, pp. 
816 — 819 ; Compare also above, pp. Gl, $q.~\ 



IDEALISM IN GENERAL. 195 

reasoning is either good for nothing, or good for more than Des- 
cartes intended. For, on the one hand, if God be no deceiver, 
he did not deceive us in our natural belief that we know some- 
thing more than the mere modes of self; but then the funda- 
mental position of the Cartesian philosophy is disproved: and 
if, on the other hand, this position be admitted, God is thereby 
confessed to be a deceiver, who, having deluded us in the belief 
on which our belief of an external world is founded, cannot be 
consistently supposed not to delude us in this belief itself. Such 
melancholy reasoning is, however, from Descartes to Dr Brown, 
the favourite logic by which the Cosmothetic Idealists in general 
attempt to resist the conclusion of the Absolute Idealists. But 
on this ground there is no tenable medium between Natural Real- 
ism and Absolute Idealism. 

It is curious to notice the different views, which Berkeley and 
Collier, our two Absolute Idealists, and which Dr Samuel Clarke, 
the acutest of the Hypothetical Realists with whom they both 
came in contact, took of this principle. 

Clarke was, apparently, too sagacious a metaphysician not to 
see that the proof of the reality of an external world reposed 
mainly on our natural belief of its reality ; and at the same time 
that this natural belief could not be pleaded in favour of his 
hypothesis by the Cosmothetic Idealist. He was himself conscious, 
that his philosophy afforded him no arms against the reasoning of 
the Absolute Idealist ; whose inference he was, however, inclined 
neither to admit, nor able to show why it should not. Whiston, 
in his Memoirs, speaking of Berkeley and his Idealism, says : — 
" He was pleased to send Dr Clarke and myself, each of us, a 
book. After we had both perused it, I went to Dr Clarke and 
discoursed with him about it to this effect : — That I, being not 
a metaphysician, was not able to answer Mr Berkeley's subtile 
premises, though I did not at all believe his absurd conclusion. 
I, therefore, desired that he, who was deep in such subtilities, 
but did not appear to believe Mr Berkeley's conclusions, would 
answer him ; which task he declined." Many years after this, as 
we are told in the Life of Bishop Berkeley, prefixed to his works : 
— " There was, at Mr Addison's instance, a meeting of Drs Clarke 
and Berkeley to discuss this speculative point ; and great hopes 
were entertained from the conference. The parties, however, 
separated without being able to come to any agreement. Dr 
Berkeley declared himself not well satisfied with the conduct of 



196 IDEALISM. 

his antagonist on the occasion, who, though he could not answer, 
had not candour enough to own himself convinced." 

Mr Benson affords us a curious anecdote to the same effect in a 
letter of Collier to Clarke. From it we learn, — that when Collier 
originally presented his Clavis to the Doctor, through a friend, 
on reading the title, Clarke good-humourcdly said : — " Poor 
gentleman I I pity him. He would be a philosopher, but has 
chosen a strange task ; for he can neither prove his point himself, 
nor can the contrary be proved againt him." 

In regard to the two Idealists themselves, each dealt with this 
ground of argument in a very different way ; and it must be con- 
fessed that in this respect Collier is favourably contrasted with 
Berkeley. — Berkeley attempts to enlist the natural belief of man- 
kind in his favour against the Hypothetical Realism of the phi- 
losophers. It is true, that natural belief is opposed to scien- 
tific opinion. Mankind are not, however, as Berkeley reports, 
Idealists. In this he even contradicts himself ; for, if they be, in 
truth, of his opinion, why does he dispute so anxiously, so learn- 
edly against them ? — Collier, on the contrary, consistently rejects 
all appeal to the common sense of mankind. The motto of his 
work, from Mallebranche, is the watchword of his philosophy : — 
" Vulgi assensus et approbatio circa materiam difficilem, est cer- 
tum argumentum falsitatis istius opinionis cut assentitur. ,> And 
in his answer to the Cartesian argument for the reality of matter, 
from " that strong and natural inclination which all men have to 
believe in an external world ; " he shrewdly remarks on the in- 
consistency of such a reasoning at such hands: — " Strange! 
That a person of Mr Descartes' sagacity should be found in so 
plain and palpable an oversight ; and that the late ingenious Mr 
JNorris should be found treading in the same track, and that too 
upon a solemn and particular disquisition of this matter. That 
whilst, on the one hand, they contend against the common in- 
clination or prejudice of mankind, that the visible world is not 
external, they should yet appeal to this same common inclination 
for the truth or being of an external world, which on their prin- 
ciples must be said to be invisible ; and for which therefore (they 
must needs have known if they had considered it), there neither 
is, nor can be, any kind of inclination." (P. 81.) 

2.) — In the second place, it was very generally assumed in 
antiquity, and during the middle ages, that an external world 
was a supposition necessary to render possible the fact of our 



IDEALISM, WHY SO LATE ? 197 

sensitive cognition. The philosophers who held, that the imme- 
diate object of perception was an emanation from an outer reality, 
and that the hypothesis of the latter was requisite to account for 
the phenomenon of the former, — their theory involved the exist- 
ence of an external world as its condition. But from the moment 
that the necessity of this condition was abandoned, and this was 
done by many even of the scholastic philosophers ;- — from the 
moment that sensible species or the vicarious objects in percep- 
tion were admitted to be derivable from other sources than the 
external objects themselves, as from God, or from the mind 
itself : from that moment we must look for other reasons than 
the preceding, to account for the remarkable fact, that it was not 
until after the commencement of the eighteenth century that a 
doctrine of Absolute Idealism was, without communication, con- 
temporaneously promulgated by Berkeley and Collier. 

3.) — In explanation of this fact, we must refer to a third 
ground, which has been wholly overlooked by the historians of 
philosophy ; but which it is necessary to take into account, would 
we explain how so obvious a conclusion as the negation of the 
existence of an outer world, on the negation of our immediate 
knowledge of its existence, should not have been drawn by so 
acute a race of speculators as the philosophers of the middle 
ages, to say nothing of the great philosophers of a more recent 
epoch. This ground is : — That the doctrine of Idealism is incom- 
patible with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. It is a very 
erroneous statement of Reid, in which, however, he errs only in 
common with other philosophers, that " during the reign of the 
Peripatetic doctrine, we find no appearance of scepticism about 
the existence wf matter." On the contrary, during the dominance 
of the scholastic philosophy, we find that the possibility of the 
non-existence of matter was contemplated ; nay, that the reasons 
in support of this supposition were expounded in all their cogency. 
We do not, however, find the conclusion founded on these reasons 
formally professed. And why ? Because this conclusion, though 
philosophically proved, was theologically disproved ; and such 
disproof was during the middle ages sufficient to prevent the 
overt recognition of any speculative doctrine ; for with all its 
ingenuity and boldness, philosophy during these ages was con- 
fessedly in the service of the church, — it was always Philosphia 
ancillans Theologice. And this because the service was volun- 
tary ; — a thraldom indeed of love. Now, if the reality of matter 



198 IDEALISM. 

were denied, there would, in general, be denied the reality of 
Christ's incarnation ; and in particular the transubstantiation into 
his body of the elements of bread and wine. There were other 
theological reasons indeed, and these not without their weight ; 
but this was, perhaps, the only one insuperable to a Catholic. 

We find the influence of this reason at work in very ancient 
times. It was employed by the earlier Fathers, and more espe- 
cially in opposition to Marcion's doctrine of the merely phenome- 
nal incarnation of our Saviour. — " Non licet " (says Tertidlian in 
his book De Anima, speaking of the evidence of sense — " non 
licet nobis in dubium sensus istus revocare, ne et in Christo de 
fide eorum deliberetur : ne forte dicatur, quod falso Satanam pro- 
spectant de cselo prascipitatum ; aut falso vocem Patris audierit 
de ipso testificatam ; aut deceptus sit cum Petri socrum tetegit. 

Sic et Marcion phantasma eum maluit credere, totius 

corporis in illo dedignatus veritatem." (Cap. xvii.) And in his 
book, Adversus Marcionem : — " Ideo Christus non erat quod 
videbatur, et quod erat mentiebatur ; caro, nee caro ; homo, nee 
homo : proinde Deus Christus, nee Deus ; cur enim non etiam Dei 
phantasma portaverit ? An credam ei de interiore substantia, 
qui sit de exteriore frustratus ? Quomodo verax habebitur in 
occulto, tarn fallax repertus in aperto ? . . , Jam nunc quum men- 
dacium deprehenditur Christus caro ; sequitur ut omnia quae per 
carnem Christi gesta sunt, mendacio gesta sint, — congressus, con- 
tactus, convictus, ipsae quoque virtutes. Si enim tangendo aliquem, 
liberavit a vitio, non potest vere actum credi, sine corporis. ipsius 
veritate. Nihil solidum ab inani, nihil plenum a vacuo perfici 
licet. Putativus habitus, putativus actus ; imaginarius operator, 
imaginariae operae." (Lib. hi. c. 8.) — In like manner, St Angus- 
tin, among many other passages : — " Si phantasma fuit corpus 
Christi, fefellit Christus ; et si fefellit, Veritas non est. Est autem 
Veritas Christus ; non igitur phantasma fuit corpus ejus." (Liber 
De Ixxxiii. Quo3Stionibus, qu. 14.) — And so many others. 

The repugnancy of the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation 
with the surrender of a substantial prototype of the species pre- 
sented to our sensible perceptions, was, however, more fully and 
precisely signalised by the Schoolmen ; as may be seen in the 
polemic waged principally on the great arena of scholastic subti- 
lity — the commentaries on the four books of the Sentences of 
Peter Lombard. In their commentaries on the first book, especi- 
ally, will be found abundant speculation of an idealistic tendency. 



CATHOLICISM INCONSISTENT WITH IDEALISM. 199 

The question is almost regularly mooted : — May not God pre- 
serve the species (the ideas of a more modern philosophy) before 
the mind, the external ideality represented being destroyed ? — May 
not God, in fact, object to the sense the species representing an ex- 
ternal world, that world, in reality, not existing ? To these ques- 
tions the answer is, always in the first instance, affirmative. Why 
then, the possibility, the probability even, being admitted, was 
the fact denied Philosophically orthodox, it was theologically 
heretical; and their principal argument for the rejection is, that 
on such hypothesis, the doctrine of a transubstantiated eucha- 
rist becomes untenable. A change is not, — cannot be, — (spiritu- 
ally) real. 

Such was the special reason, why many of the acuter School- 
men did not follow out their general argument, to the express 
negation of matter ; and such also was the only reason, to say 
nothing of other Cartesians, why Mallebranche deformed the 
simplicity of his peculiar theory with such an assumptive hors 
d'oeuvre, as an unknown and otiose universe of matter. It is, 
indeed, but justice to that great philosopher to say, — that if the 
incumbrance with which, as a Catholic, he was obliged to burden 
it, be thrown off his theory, that theory becomes one of Absolute 
Idealism ; and that, in fact, all the principal arguments in sup- 
port of such a scheme are found fully developed in his immortal 
Inquiry after Truth. This Mallebranche well knew ; and know- 
ing it, we can easily understand, how Berkeley's interview with 
him ended as it did.* 

Mallebranche thus left little for his Protestant successors to do. 
They had only to omit the Catholic excrescence ; the reasons vin- 
dicating this omission they found collected and marshalled to their 

* [I cannot, however, concur in the praise of novelty and invention, which 
has always been conceded to the central theory of Mallebranche. His 
" Vision of all things in the Deity" is, as it appears to me, simply a transfer- 
ence to man in the flesh, to the Viator, of that mode of cognition, maintained 
jby many of the older Catholic divines, in explanation of how the Saints, as 
disembodied spirits, can be aware of human invocations, and, in general, of 
what passes upon earth. " They perceive" it is said, " all things in God" 
So that, in truth, the philosophical theory of Mallebranche, is nothing but 
the extension of a theological hypothesis, long common in the schools ; and 
with scholastic speculations, Mallebranche was even intimately acquainted. 
— This hypothesis I had once occasion to express : — 

" Quidquid, in his tenebris vitce, came latebat, 
Nunc legis in magno cuncta, heate, Deo."~\ 



200 IDEALISM. 

hand. That Idealism was the legitimate issue of the Malle- 
branchian doctrine, was at once seen by those competent to meta- 
physical reasoning. This was signalised, in general, by Bayle, 
and, what has not been hitherto noticed, by Locke.* It was, 

* Compare Locke's Examination of P. Malebranclie 1 s Opinion, (§ 20.) 

When on this subject, we may clear np a point connected therewith, of 
some interest, in relation to Locke and Newton, and which has engaged the 
attention of Dr Reid and Mr Dugald Stewart. 

Reid, who has overlooked the passage of Locke just referred to, says, in 
deducing the history of the Berkeleian Idealism, and after speaking of Malle- 
branche's opinion : — " It may seem strange that Locke, who wrote so much 
about ideas, should not see those consequences which Berkeley thought so 

obviously deducible from that doctrine There is, indeed, a 

single passage in Locke's essay, which may lead one to conjecture that he had 
a glimpse of that system which Berkeley afterwards advanced, but thought 
proper to suppress it within his own breast. The passage is in Book IV., 
c. 10, where, having proved the existence of an eternal, intelligent mind, he 
comes to answer those who conceive that matter also must be eternal, 
because we cannot conceive how it could be made out of nothing; and, 
having observed that the creation of mind requires no less power than the 
creation of matter, he adds what follows : — c Nay, possibly, if we could 
emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts, as far as 
they would reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to 
aim at some dim and seeming conception, how matter might at first be made 
and begin to exist, by the power of that eternal first Being ; but to give 
beginning and being to a spirit, would be found a more inconceivable effect 
of omnipotent power. But this being what would, perhaps, lead us too far 
from the notions on which the philosophy now in the world is built, it would 
not be pardonable to deviate so far from them, or to inquire, so far as gram- 
mar itself would authorise, if the common settled opinion oppose it ; espe- 
cially in this place, where the received doctrine serves well enough to our 
present purpose.' " Reid then goes on at considerable length to show, that 
" every particular Mr Locke has hinted with regard to that system which he 
had in his mind, but thought it prudent to suppress, tallies exactly with the 
system of Berkeley." {Intellectual Powers, Ess. II. ch. 10.) 

Stewart does not coincide with Reid. In quoting the same passage of 
Locke, he says of it, that u when considered in connection with some others 
in his writings, it would almost tempt one to think, that a theory concerning 
matter, somewhat analogous to that of Boscovich, had occasionally passed 
through his mind ; " and then adduces various reasons in support of this opi- 
nion, and in opposition to Reid's. (Philosophical Essays, Ess. II. ch. 1, 
p. G3.) 

The whole arcanum in the passage in question is, however, revealed by 
M. ( 'oste, the French translator of the Essay, and of several other of the 
works of Locke, with whom the philosopher Heed in the same family, and on 
the most intimate term*, for the last seven years of his life ; and who, though 

he has never been consulted, affords Often the most important information in 



COLLIER'S IDEALISM. 201 

therefore, but little creditable to the acuteness of Norris, that he, 
a Protestant, should have adopted the Mallebranchian hypothesis, 
without rejecting its Catholic incumbrance. The honour of first 
promulgating an articulate scheme of absolute idealism was thus 
left to Berkeley and Collier ; and though both are indebted to 
Mallebranche for the principal arguments they adduce, each is 
also entitled to the credit of having applied them with an inge- 
nuity peculiar to himself. 

It is likewise to the credit of Collier's sagacity that he has 
noticed (and he is the only modern philosopher, we have found, 
to have anticipated our observation,) the incompatibility of the 
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist with the non-existence of mat- 
ter. In the concluding chapter of his work, in which he speaks 
" of the use and consequences of the foregoing treatise," he enu- 
merates as one " particular usefulness with respect to religion," 

regard to Locke's opinions. To this passage, there is in the fourth edition of 
Coste's translation, a very curious note appended, of which the following is 
an abstract. " Here Mr Locke excites our curiosity without being inclined 
to satisfy it. Many persons having imagined that he had communicated to 
me this mode of explaining the creation of matter, requested, when my transla- 
tion first appeared, that I would inform them what it was ; but I was 
obliged to confess, that Mr Locke had not made even me a partner in the 
secret. At length, long after his death, Sir Isaac Newton, to whom I was 
accidentally speaking of this part of Mr Locke's book, discovered to me the 
whole mystery. He told me, smiling, that it was he himself who had imagined 
this manner of explaining the creation of matter, and that the thought had 
struck him, one day, when this question chanced to turn up in a conversa- 
tion between himself, Mr Locke, and the late Earl of Pembroke. The fol- 
lowing is the way in which he explained to them his thought : — ' We may 
be enabled' 1 (he said) 4 to form some rude conception of the creation of matter, 
if we suppose that God by his power had prevented the entrance of any thing 
into a certain portion of pure space, which is of its nature penetrable, eternal, 
necessary, infinite ; for henceforward this portion of space would be endowed 
with impenetrability, one of the essential qualities of matter : and as pure 
space is absolutely uniform, we have only again to suppose that God communi- 
cated the same impenetrability to another portion of space, and we should then 
obtain in a certain sort the notion of the mobility of matter, another quality 
which is also very essential to itS Thus, then, we are relieved of the embar- 
rassment of endeavouring to discover what it was that Mr Locke had deemed 
it advisable to conceal from his readers : for the above is all that gave him 
occasion to tell us, — ' if we would raise our thoughts as far as they could 
reach, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception how mat- 
ter might at first be made,' " &c. — This suffices to show what was the general 
purport of Locke's expressions, and that Mr Stewart's conjecture is at least 
nearer to the truth than Dr Reid's. 



202 IDEALISM. 

the refutation it affords of " the real presence of Christ's body in 
the Eucharist, in which the Papists have grafted the doctrine of 
transubstantiation." He says : — 

u Now nothing can be more evident, than that both the sound and ex- 
plication of this important doctrine are founded altogether on the supposition 
of external matter ; so that, if this be removed, there is not any thing left 
whereon to build so much as the appearance of a question. — For if, after 
this, it be inquired whether the substance of the bread, in this sacrament, be not 
changed into the substance of the body of Christ, the accidents or sensible ap- 
pearances remaining as before ; or suppose this should be affirmed to be the 
fact, or at least possible, it may indeed be shown to be untrue or impossible, 
on the supposition of an external world, from certain consequential absurdi- 
ties which attend it ; but to remove an external world, is to prick it in 
its punctum saliens, or quench its very vital flame. For if there is no external 
matter, the very distinction is lost between the substance and accidents, or 
sensible species of bodies, and these last will become the sole essence of ma- 
terial objects. So that, if these are supposed to remain as before, there is 
no possible room for the supposal of any change, in that the thing supposed 
to be changed, is here shown to be nothing at all." (P. 95.) 

But we must conclude. — What has now been said, in reference 
to a part of its contents, may perhaps contribute to attract the 
attention, of those interested in the higher philosophy, to this 
very curious volume. We need hardly add, that Mr Benson's 
Memoirs of Collier should be bound up along with it. 



LITERATURE. 



I.-EPISTOLJE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM; 

THE NATIONAL SATIRE OF GERMANY.* 

(March, 1831.) 

Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, aliaque aevi decimi sexti rnoni- 
menta rarissima. — Die Brief % der Finsterlinge an Magister 
Ortuinus von Deventer, nebst andern sehr seltenen Beytraegen 
zur Litter atur-Sitten-und Kirchengeschichte des Sechszehnter 
Jahrhunderts. Herausgegeben und erlaeutert (lurch Dr Ernst 
Muench. 8vo. Leipzig : 1827. 

With the purest identity of origin, the Germans have shown 
always the weakest sentiment of nationality. Descended from 
the same ancestors, speaking a common language, unconquered 
by a foreign enemy, and once the subjects of a general govern- 
ment, they are the only people in Europe who have passively 
allowed their national unity to be broken down, and submitted, 
like cattle, to be parcelled and reparcelled into flocks, as suited the 
convenience of their shepherds. The same unpatriotic apathy is 
betrayed in their literary as in their political existence. In other 
countries taste is perhaps too exclusively national ; in Germany 
it is certainly too cosmopolite. Teutonic admiration seems, 

* [Translated into German by Dr Vogler, in the Altes undNeues of 1832 ; 
after being largely extracted in various other literary journals of the Empire. 
I am aware of no attempt to gainsay the proof of authorship here detailed ; 
or, in general, the justice of the criticism. — A considerable number of addi- 
tions have been inserted in this article ; but these, as they affect no personal 
interest, it has not been thought necessary often to distinguish.] 



204 EPISTOL^ OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

indeed, to be essentially centrifugal ; and literary partialities 
have in the Empire inclined always in favour of the foreign. 
The Germans were long familiar with the literature of every 
other nation, before they thought of cultivating, or rather creat- 
ing, a literature of their own ; and when this was at last attempted, 
fai/pee, rcov octtoutcov was still the principle that governed in the 
experiment. It was essayed, by a process of foreign infusion, to 
elaborate the German tongue into a vehicle of pleasing commu- 
nication ; nor were they contented to reverse the operation, until 
the project had been stultified by its issue, and the purest and 
only all-sufficient of the modern languages degraded into a Baby- 
lonish jargon, without a parallel in the whole history of speech. 
A counterpart to this overweening admiration of the strange 
and distant, is the discreditable indifference manifested by the 
Germans to the noblest monuments of native genius. To their 
eternal disgrace, the works of Leibnitz were left to be collected 
by a Frenchman ; while the care denied by his countrymen to 
the great representative of German universality, was lavished, 
with an eccentric affection, on the not more important specula- 
tions of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, and Cudworth. But no neglect, 
even by their own confession, has weighed so long or so heavily 
against the Germans, as the want of a collective edition of the 
works of their great national patriot, Ulrich von Hutten, and 
of a critical and explanatory edition of their great national satire, 
the EpisTOLiE Obscurorum Vtrorum. This reproach has, in 
part, been recently removed. Dr Muench has accomplished the 
one, and attempted the other; we wish we could say, — accom- 
plished well, or attempted successfully. We speak at present 
only of the latter ; and, as an essay towards (what is still want- 
ing) an explanatory introduction, shall premise a rapid outline 
of the circumstances which occasioned this celebrated satire, — a 
satire which, though European in its influence, has yet, as Herder 
justly observes, " effected for Germany incomparably more, 
than Hudibras for England, or Garagantua for France, or the 
Knight of La Mancha for Spain." It gave the victory to Reach* 
lin over the Begging Friars, and to Luther over the Court of 
Rome. 

The Italians excepted, no people took so active a part in the 
revival of ancient literature as the Germans; yet in no country 
did the champions of the new intelligence obtain loss adventitious 
aid in their exertions, or encounter so formidable a resistance 



RISE OF HUMANE STUDIES IN GERMANY. 205 

from the defenders of the ancient barbarism. Germany did not, 
like Italy and France, allure the learned fugitives from Con- 
stantinople, to transplant into her seminaries the language and 
literature of Greece ; and though learning was not here deprived 
of all liberal encouragement, still the princes and nobles of the 
Empire did not, as the great Italian families, emulate each other, 
in a munificent patronage of letters. But what in Germany prin- 
cipally contributed to impede the literary reformation, was the 
opposition which it met with in the great literary corporations 
themselves. In the other countries of Europe, especially in 
France and England, the first sparks of the rekindled light had 
been fostered in the universities ; * these were in fact the centres 
from whence the new illumination was diffused. In Germany, 
on the contrary, the academic walls contained the most resolute 
enemies of reform, and in the universities were found the last 
strongholds of an effete, but intolerant scholasticism. Some, 
indeed, of the restorers of polite letters, taught as salaried or 
extraordinary instructors, (professores conducti,) in the universi- 
ties of Germany ; but their influence was personal, and the tole- 
ration which they obtained, precarious. Dependent always on 
the capricious patronage of the Prince, they were viewed as 
intruders by those bodies who constituted and governed these 
institutions. From them they encountered, not only discourage- 
ment, but oppression ; and the biography of the first scholars 
who attempted, by public instruction, to disseminate a taste for 
classical literature in the great schools of Germany, exhibits little 
else than a melancholy series of wanderings and persecutions, — 
abandoning one university only, in general, to be ejected from 
another. 

The restoration of classical literature, (and classical literature 
involved literature in general,) was in Germany almost wholly 
accomplished by individual zeal, aided, principally, by one pri- 
vate institution. This institution was the conventual seminary 
of St Agnes, near Zwoll, in Westphalia, founded by the pious 
Thomas a Kempis ; from whence, immediately or mediately, 
issued nearly the whole band of those illustrious scholars who, 
iii defiance of every opposing circumstance, succeeded in rapidly 

* No thanks, however, to the Universities. They, of course, resisted the 
innovation. A king and a minister, Francis and Wolsey, determined the 
difference ; but for them, Budaeus and Colet might have been persecuted 
like "Buschius and Reuehlin. 



206 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

elevating Germany to a higher European rank in letters, than 
(rebarbarised by polemical theology and religious wars,) she was 
again able to reach for almost three centuries thereafter. 

Six schoolfellows and friends, — Count Maurice von Spiegelberg, 
Rodolph von Lange (Langius), Alexander Hegius, Lewis Drin- 
genberg, Antonius Liber, and Rodolphus Agricola, — all trained in 
the discipline of a Kempis, became, towards the end of the fifteenth 
century, the apostles of this reform in literature and education ; 
and this mainly by their exertions with those of their disciples, 
was, in a few years, happily accomplished throughout the empire. 
The two first, (we neglect chronology), noblemen of rank and 
dignitaries in the church, co-operated to this end, by their liberal 
patronage of other scholars, and more especially by the founda- 
tion of improved schools ; the four last, by their skill and industry 
as practical teachers, and by the influence of their writings.* 

After their return from Italy, where they had studied under 
Trapezuntius and Gaza, and enjoyed the friendship of Philelphus, 
Laurentius Valla, and Leonardus Aretinus, Von Lange was nomi- 
nated Dean of Munster, and Count Spiegelberg, Provost of Em- 
merich. — Through the influence of the former, himself a Latin 
poet of no inconsiderable talent, the decayed school of Munster 
was revived ; supplied with able masters, among whom Camenerius, 
Csesarius, and Murmellius, were distinguished; and, in spite of 
every opposition from the predicant friars and university of 
Cologne, the barbarous schoolbooks were superseded, and the 
heathen classics studied, as in the schools of Italy and France. 
From this seminary, soon after its establishment, proceeded Petrus 

* An account of the Fratres Hieronymici would be an interesting piece of 
literary history. The scattered notices to be found of this association are 
meagre and incorrect. We may observe, that the celebrated Frieslander, 
John Wessel of Gansfurt, an alumnus also of the College of St Agnes, pre- 
ceded the six confederates, enumerated in the text, as a restorer of letters in 
Germany. Before Reuchlin, (whom he initiated in Hebrew,) he conjoined 
a knowledge of the three learned languages ; these, which he had cultivated 
in Greece, Italy, and France, he taught, at least privately, on his return to 
Germauy, in the universities of Cologne, Heidelberg, and Basle. His eru- 
dition, his scholastic subtlety, with his contempt for scholastic authority, 
obtained for him the title of Lux Mundi and Maguster Contradictionum. In 
religious opinions, he was the forerunner of Luther. He is not to be con- 
founded (as has been done) with the famous preacher, Joannes, variously 
called Wesalius, de ]Yessalia, and even Wesselus, accused by the Dominicans 
of suspicious intercourse with the Jews, and, through their influence, unjustly 
eondemned for heresy in 1479, by the Archbishop of Mentz. 



RISE OF HUMANE STUDIES IN GERMANY. 207 

Nehemius, Josephus Horlenius, (the master of Mosellanus,) 
Ludolphus Heringius, Alexander Moppensis, Tilemannus Mollerus, 
(the master of Rivius,) &c, who. as able schoolmasters, propagated 
the improvement in education and letters throughout the north of 
Germany. 

A similar reform was effected by Count Spiegelberg in the 
school of Emmerich. 

Hegius, a man of competent learning, but of unrivalled talents 
as a practical instructor, became rector of the school of Daventer ; 
and he can boast of having turned out from his tuition a greater 
number of more illustrious scholars than any pedagogue of modern 
times. Among his pupils were, Desiderius Erasmus, Hermannus 
Buschius, Joannes Csesarius, Joannes Murmellius, Joannes Glan- 
dorpius, Conradus Mutianus, Hermannus Torrentinus, Bartho- 
lomaeus Coloniensis, Conradus Goclenius, the Aedicollii, Joannes 
and Serratius, Jacobus Montanus, Joannes Peringius, Timannus 
Camenerius, Gerardus Lystrius, Matthaeus Frissemius, Ludolphus 
Geringius, &c. Nor must Ortuinus Gratius be forgotten. 

Dringenberg transplanted the discipline of Zwoll to Schlecht- 
stadt in Alsace ; and he effected for the south of Germany what 
his colleagues accomplished for the north. Among his pupils, who 
almost rivalled in numbers and celebrity those of Hegius, were 
Conradus Celtes, Jacobus Wimphelingius, Beatus Rhenanus, 
Joannes Sapidus, Bilibald Pirkheimer, John von Dalberg, Fran- 
ciscus Stadianus, George Simler, (the master of Melanchthon,) 
and Henricus Bebelius, (the master of Brassicanus and Heinrich- 
niann.) 

Liber taught successfully at Kempten and Amsterdam ; and, when 
driven from these cities by the partisans of the ancient barbarism, 
he finally established himself at Alcmar. The most celebrated of 
his pupils were Pope Hadrian VI. , Nicolaus Clenardus, Alardus 
of Amsterdam, Cornelius Crocus, and Christophorus Longolius. 

The genius of Agricola displayed the rarest union of originality, 
elegance, and erudition. After extorting the reluctant admiration 
of the fastidious scholars of Italy, he returned to Germany, where 
his writings, exhortation, and example, powerfully contributed to 
promote the literary reformation. It was only, however, in the 
latter years of his short life, that he was persuaded by his friend, 
Von Dalberg, Bishop of Worms, to lecture publicly (though 
declining the status of Professor) on the Greek and Roman 
authors ; and he delivered, with great applause, a few courses,, 



208 EPISTOLJE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

alternately at Heidelberg and Worms. Celtes and Buschius were 
among his auditors. There is no hyperbole in his epitaph by a 
great Italian : — 

" Scilicet hoc uno meruit Geraiania, laudis 

Quicquid habet Latiurn, Graecia quicquid habet." 

The first restorers of ancient learning in Germany were thus 
almost exclusively pupils of a Kempis or of his disciples. There 
was, however, one memorable exception in John Reuchlin (Joan- 
nes Capnio), who was not, as his biographers erroneously assert, 
a scholar of Dringenberg at Schlechtstadt.* Of him we are again 
to speak. 

We have been thus particular, in order to show that the awa- 
kened enthusiasm for classical studies did not in Germany origin- 
ate in the Universities ; and it was only after a strenuous opposition 
from these bodies that ancient literature at last conquered its re- 
cognition as an element of academical instruction. At the period 
of which we treat, the prelections and disputations, the examina- 
tions and honours, of the different faculties, required only an ac- 
quaintance with the barbarous Latinity of the middle ages. The 
new philology was thus not only a hors d'ceuvre in the academical 
system, or, as the Leipsic Masters expressed it, a " fifth wheel in 
the waggon ;" it was abominated as a novelty, that threw the an- 
cient learning into discredit, diverted the studious from the Uni- 
versities, emptied the schools of the Magistri, and the bursas or 
colleges over which they presided, and rendered contemptible the 
once honoured distinction of a degree, j 

* His connexion with Zwoll and the Brethren of St Jerome may, however, 
be established through John Wessel, from whom he learned the elements of 
Hebrew. 

f " Attamen intellcxi," writes Magister Unkenbunck to Magister Gratius. 
44 quod habetis paucos auditores, et est querela vestra, quod Buschius et Ca 1 - 
sarius trahunt vobis scholares et supposita abinde, cum tamen ipsi non sciunt 
ita exponere Poetas allegories, sicut vos, et superallegare sacrain scripturam. 
Credo quod diabolus est in illis Poe'tis. Ipsi destruunt omnes Universitates, 
et audivi ab uno antiquo Magistro Lipsensi, qui fait Magister 36. aunorum, 
et dixit mihi, quando ipse fuisset invenis, tunc ilia Universitas bene stetis- 
set: quia in vigiuti milliaribus nullus Poeta fuisset. Et dixit etiam, quod 
tunc supposita diligenter compleverunt lectiones suas formales et materiales, 
seu bursales : et fuit magnum scandalum, quod aliquis studens iret in platen, 
et non haberct Petrum Hispanum, aut Parva Logicalia sub brachio. Et si 
fuerunt Grammatici, tunc portabant Partes Alexandri, vel Vade Mecum, 
vel Exercitium Puerorum, aut Opus Minus, aut Dicta loan. Sinthen. Et in 



OPPOSITION TO HUMANE STUDIES. 209 

In possession of power, it is not to be supposed that the patrons 
of scholasticism would tamely allow themselves to be stripped of 
reputation and influence ; and it did not require the ridicule with 
which the " Humanists," or " Poets" as they were styled, now 
assailed them, to exasperate their spirit of persecution. Greek in 
particular, and polite letters in general, were branded as hereti- 
cal ; * and, while the academical youth hailed the first lecturers 
on ancient literature in the Universities, as " messengers from 
Heaven," f the academical veterans persecuted these intruders 

scliolis advertebant diligenter, et habuerunt in honore Magistros Artium, et 
quando viderunt uimni Magistrum, tunc fuerunt perterriti, quasi viderent 
unum Diabolum. Et dicit etiam, quod pro tunc, quater in anno promo ve- 
bantur Bacculaurii, et semper pro una vice sunt sexaginta aut quinquaginta. 
Et illo tempore Universitas ilia fuit multum in flore, et quando unus stetit 
per annum cum dimidio, fuit promotus in Bacculaurium, et per tres annos 
aut duos cum dimidio, in Magistrum. Et sic parentes eorum fuerunt con- 
tenti, et libenter exposuerunt pecunias ; quia videbant, quod filii sui vene- 
runt ad honores. Sed nunc supposita volunt audire Virgilium et Plinium, 
et alios novos autores, et licet audiunt per quinque annos, tamen non pro- 
moventur. Et dixit ruihi amplius talis Magister, quod tempore suo fuerunt 
duo millia studentes in Lyptzick, et Erfordise totidem. Et Viennse quatuor 
millia, et Colonise etiam tot, et sic de aliis. Nunc autem in omnibus Uni- 
versitatibus non sunt tot supposita, sicut tunc in una, aut duabus. Et Ma- 
gistri Lipseuses nunc valde conqueruntur de paucitate suppositorum, quia 
Poe'tae faciunt eis damnum. Et quando parentes mittunt filios suos in bur- 
sas, et collegia, non volunt ibi manere, sed vadunt ad Poetas, et student 
nequitias. Et dixit mihi, quod ipse Liptzick olim habuit quadraginta domi- 
cellos, et quando ivit in ecclesiam, vel ad forum, vel spaciatum in rubetum, 
tunc iverunt post eum. Et fuit tunc niagnus excessus, studere in Poetria. 
Et quando unus confitebatur in confessione, quod occulte audivit Virgilium 
ab uno Bacculaurio, tunc Sacerdos imponebat ei magnaui poBiiitentiam, vide- 
licet, jejunare singulis sextis feriis vel orare quotidie septem Psalmos poeni- 
tentiales. Et juravit mibi in conscientia sua, quod vidit, quod unus magis- 
trandus fuit rejectus, quia unus de examinatoribus semel in die festo vidit 
ipsum legere in Terentio. Utinam adhuc staret ita in Universitatibus !" ets. 
(Epist. Obs. Vir. — Vol. II. ep. 46. See also among others, Vol. II. ep. 58 
and 63. We quote these epistles by number, though this be marked in none 
of the editions. 

* " Haeresis," says Erasmus, speaking of these worthies, — " haeresis est 
polite loqui, haeresis Graace scire ; quicquid ipsinon intelligunt, quicquid ipsi 
non faciunt, haeresis est. In unum Capnionem clamatur, quia linguas cal- 
let." (Opera III. c. 517. ed. Clerici.) See also Peutinger, in Epist ad 
Reuchl. (sig. A ii.) Iiutten, Prcef. Neminis. 

t " Omnino fervebat opus," says Cruciger, " et deserebantur tractationes 
prioris doctrinal atque futilis, et nitor elegantiaque disciplinae politioris ex- 
petebantur. Tunc Lipsiam Ricardus Crocus, Britannus, qui in Gallia 

O 



210 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

as " preachers of perversion," and " winnowers of the devil's 
chaff * Conradus Celtes, Hermannus Buschius, and Joannes 
Rhagius Aesticampianus, were successively expelled from Leipsic ;f 
other universities emulated the example. The great University 
of Cologne stood, however, " proudly eminent " in its hostility to 
the new intelligence ; for improvement was there opposed by the 
united influence of the Monks and Masters. When Von Lange 
commenced his reformation of the school of Munster, a vehement 

auditor fuerat Hieronymi Alexandri [Aleandri], venit, anno Chr. MDXV 
[MDXIV], professusque doctrinam Graecarum litteraruin, omnium amorem 
favoremque statim est maximum consecutus : quod hujus linguae non prim- 
ordia, ut aliqui ante ipsnm, sed integram atque plenam scientiam illius 
afferre, et posse hanc totam explicare, docereque videretur. Negabat meus 
pater, credibile nunc esse id, quod ipse tunc cognoverit. Tanquam ccelitus 
demissum] Crocum omnes veneratos esse aiebat, unumquemque se felicem 
judicasse, si in familiaritatem ipsius insinuaretur : docenti vero et mercedem, 
quae postularetur, persolvere ; et quocumque loco temporeque prsesto esse, 
recusavisse neminem ; si coneubia nocte se conveniri, si quamvis longe extra 
oppidumjussisset, omnes libenterobsecutifuissent." (Loc. Comm.) (Among 
the Declamations of Melanckthon, see Oratio de Initiis, &c. and Oratio de 
Vita Trocedorfii ; see also Camerarius, (the pupil of Croke,) in the Preface 
to his Herodotus, and in his Life of Melanchthon.) Dr Croke (afterwards 
an agent of Henry VIH. in the affair of the divorce, and Public Orator of 
Cambridge) was the first Professor of Greek in Leipsic, and the first author 
of a grammar of that language, published in Germany. He founded that 
school which, under his successor, Sir Godfrey Hermann, is now the chief 
fountain of Hellenic literature in Europe. His life ought to be written. Sir 
Alexander Croke, in his late splendid history of the family, has collected 
some circumstances concerning this distinguished scholar ; but a great deal 
of interesting information still remains ungathered, among his own and the 
writings of his contemporaries. We could fill a page with mere references. 

* Buschii VallumHumanitatis, ed. Burckhardi, p. 15. In Leipsic, humane 
letters were styled by the theologians, Dcemonum cibus, Dcemonum opsonhon, 
Aegyptiae ollae, virulentae Aegyptiorum dopes. (Panegyricum Lipsiensis 
Thcologi. — Praef. Lipsiae, 1514.) 

f We have before us an oration of Aesticampianus, delivered in 1511, on 
his departure from Leipsic, after the public schools had been closed against 
him by the faculty of arts. We extract one passage — " Quern enim poet- 
arum eloquentium non sunt persecuti patres vestri, et quern vos ludibrio non 
habuistis, qui ad vos expoliendos, quasi ccelitus sunt de?nissi? Nam, ut e 
multis paucos refcram, Conradum Celten pene hostilitcr expulistis ; Herman- 
num Buschium diu ac multum vexatum cjecistis ; Joannem quoque Aesticam- 
pianum variis machinis oppugnatum, tandem evert itis. Quia tandem Poet- 
arum ad vos veniet? Nemo, hercle, nemo. Inculti ergo jejunique vivetis, 
foedi animis et inglorii, qui, nisi pcenitentiam egeritis, damnati omnes immo- 
riemini" 



PERSECUTION OF THE HUMANISTS AND OF REUCHLIN. 211 

remonstrance was transmitted from the faculties of Cologne to 
the bishop and chapter of that see, reprobating the projected 
change in the schoolbooks hitherto in use, and remonstrating 
against the introduction of pagan authors into the course of juve- 
nile instruction. Foiled in this attempt, the obscurants of that 
venerable seminary resisted only the more strenuously every 
effort at a reform within Cologne itself. They oppressed and 
relegated, one after another, Bartholomaeus Coloniensis, the two 
Aedicollii (Joannes and Serratius), Joannes Murmellius, Joannes 
Caesarius, and Hermannus Buschius, as dangerous innovators, 
who corrupted the minds of youth by mythological fancies, 
and the study of unchristian authors. Supported, however, 
by Count Nuenar, dean of the canonical chapter, and the 
influence of his own rank, Buschius, a nobleman by birth, the 
scholar of Hegius, and friend and schoolfellow of Erasmus, stood 
his ground even in Cologne, against the scholastic zealots ; and, 
though thrice compelled to abandon the field of contest, he finally 
succeeded in discomfiting, even in their firmest stronghold, the 
enemies of light. Pliny and Ovid were read along with Boethius 
and Sedulius ; the ancient school-books — the Doctrinale of Alex- 
ander, the Disciplines Scholarum, the Catholicon, the Mamrno- 
trectus, (Mammaetractus,) the Gemma Gemmarum, the Laby- 
rinthus, the Dormisecure, &c. &c, were at last no longer, even in 
Cologne, recognised as of exclusive authority ; and, within a few 
years after their disgrace in this fastness of prescriptive barbarism, 
they were exploded from all the schools and universities through- 
out the empire. In this difficult exploit Buschius was aided by 
Erasmus, Hutten, Melanchthon, Torrentinus, Bebelius, Simler, &c. 

This was, however, but a skirmish, compared with another 
kindred and simultaneous contest ; and the obstinacy of Buschius, 
in defence of classical Latinity, only exasperated the theologians 
of Cologne to put forth all their strength in opposition to Reuch- 
lin, a still more influential champion of illumination, and in sup- 
pression of the more obnoxious study of Hebrew. 

The character of Reuchlin is one of the most remarkable in 
that remarkable age ; for it exhibits, in the highest perfection, a 
combination of qualities which are in general found incompatible. 
At once a man of the world and of books, he excelled equally in 
practice and speculation ; was a statesman and a philosopher, a 
jurist and a divine. Nobles, and princes, and emperors, honoured 
him with their favour, and employed him in their most difficult 



212 EPISTOLJE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

affairs ; while the learned throughout Europe looked up to him 
as the " trilingue miraculum," the " phoenix litterarum," the 
" eruditorum &K<p*" In Italy, native Romans listened with plea- 
sure to his Latin declamation ; and he compelled the jealous 
Greeks to acknowledge that " Greece had overflown the Alps." 
Of his countrymen, he was the first to introduce the study of 
ancient literature into the German Universities ; the first who 
opened the gates of the east, unsealed the word of God, and un- 
veiled the sanctuary of Hebrew wisdom. Agricola was the only 
German of the fifteenth century who approached him in depth of 
classical erudition ; and it was not til] after the commencement of 
the sixteenth, that Erasmus rose to divide with him the admira- 
tion of the learned. As an Oriental scholar, Reuchlin died with- 
out a rival. Cardinal Fisher, who " almost adored his name," 
made a pilgrimage from England, for the sole purpose of visiting 
the object of his worship ; and that great divine candidly con- 
fesses to Erasmus, that he regarded Reuchlin as " bearing off 
from all men the palm of knowledge, especially in what pertained 
to the hidden matters of religion and philosophy." At the period 
of which we speak, Reuchlin, withdrawn from academical tuition 
to the conduct of political affairs, was not, however, unemployed 
in peaceably promoting by his writings the cause of letters ; 
when suddenly he found himself, in the decline of life, the victim 
of a formidable persecution, which threatened ruin to himself, and 
proscription to his favourite pursuits. 

The alarming progress of the new learning had at last con- 
vinced the theologians and philosophers of the old leaven, that 
their credit was only to be restored by a desperate and combined 
effort, — not against the partisans, but against the leaders of the 
literary reformation. " The two eyes of Germany " were to be 
extinguished ; and the theologians of Cologne undertook to deal 
with Reuchlin, while Erasmus was left to the mercies of their 
brethren of Louvain. The assailants pursued their end with 
obstinacy, if not with talent ; that they did not succeed, showed 
that the spirit of the age had undergone a change, — a change 
which the persecutions themselves mainly contributed to accom- 
plish. 

It was imagined that Hebrew literature, and the influence of 
Reuchlin, could not be more effectually suppressed, than by 
rendering both the objects of religious suspicion. In this at- 
tempt, the theologians of Cologne found an appropriate instru- 



HISTORY OF THE REUCHLINIAN PROCESS. 213 

ment in John Pfefferkorn, a Jew, who had taken refuge in 
Christianity from the punishment which his crimes had merited 
at the hands of his countrymen.* In the course of the years 
1505 and 1509, four f treatises (three in Latin, one in German) 
were published under the name of the new convert ; the scope of 
which was to represent the Jewish religion in the most odious 
light. The next step was to obtain from the Emperor an edict, 
commanding that all Hebrew books, with exception of the Bible, 
should be searched for, and burned, throughout the empire ; on 
the ground, that the Jewish literature was nothing but a collec- 
tion of libels on the character of Christ and Christianity. The 
cultivation of Hebrew learning would thus be rendered impos- 
sible, or at least discouraged ; and, at the same time, it was pro- 
bably expected that the Jews would bribe liberally to evade the 
execution of the decree. Maximilian was, in fact, weak or negli- 
gent enough to listen to the misrepresentation, and even to bestow 
on Pfefferkorn the powers necessary to carry the speculation into 
effect ; but some informality having been discovered, in the terms 
of the commission, the Jews had interest to obtain a suspension of 
the order ; and previous to its renewal, a mandate was issued, 
requiring, among other opinions, that of Reuchlin, as to the 
nature and contents of the Jewish writings. Of the referees, 
Reuchlin alone complied with the requisition. He reported, that 
to extirpate Hebrew literature in the mass, was not only unjust, 
but inexpedient ; that a large proportion of the Rabbinic writings 
was not of a theological character at all, and consisted of works 
not only innocent, but highly useful ; nay, that the religious 
books themselves, while not, in general, such as they had been 
malevolently represented, were of the greatest importance to 
Christianity, as furnishing, in fact, the strongest arguments in 
refutation of the doctrine they defended. 

* Maius, in his Vita Reuchlini, Jacobus Thomasius, in the Observationes 
Hallenses, Dupin in his Nouvelle Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, and 
many others, confounded this John Pfefferkorn with a relapsed Jew of the 
same name, who was burned for blasphemy at Halle in 1514. The Epistolce 
Obscurorum Virorum, and the Poemata of Hutten, might have kept them 
right. Our John was living in 1521. 

t These tracts are extremely rare. Meiners (to say nothing of Muench) 
was acquainted only with three. In our collection there is a fourth, entitled 
Hostis Judceorum, ets. with the Epigramma politum of Ortuinus against the 
Jews, in the titlepage, which was reprinted in his Lamentationes Obscuro- 
rum Virorum. 



214 EPISTOL.E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

This was precisely what the obscurants of Cologne desired. 
Pfefferkorn, with their assistance, published, (1511,) under the 
name of Handglass (Handspiegel), a tract in which Reuchlin was 
held up to religious detestation, as the advocate of Jewish blas- 
phemy, and as guilty of many serious errors in the faith. Reuchlin 
condescended to reply ; and his Eyeglass (Augenspiegel) exposed 
the ignorance and falsehood of his contemptible adversary. The 
principals now found it necessary to come forward. Arnold 
Tungern, as Dean of the Theological Faculty of Cologne, under- 
took to sift the orthodoxy of the Eyeglass ; forty-three propo- 
sitions " de Judaico favore nimis suspectse," were extracted and 
published ; and Reuchlin summoned to an open recantation, 
(1512.) In his Defensio contra calumniatores suos Colonienses, 
(1513,) Reuchlin annihilated the accusation, and treated his 
accusers with the unmitigated severity which their malevolence 
and hypocrisy deserved. These were, James Hoogstraten, a man 
of no inconsiderable ability, and of extensive influence, as member 
of the Theological Faculty of Cologne, as Prior of the Dominican 
Convent in that city, and " Inquisitor hsereticae pravitatis," for 
the dioceses of Cologne, Mentz, and Treves, — Arnold of Tungern 
(or Luyd), Dean of the Theological Faculty, and head of the 
Burse of St Lawrence, — and Ortuinus Gratius (Ortwin von 
Graes\ a pupil of Hegius, and now a leading member of the 
Faculty of Arts, but a sycophant, who, in hopes of preferment, 
prostituted talents in subservience to the enemies of that learning 
in which he was himself no contemptible proficient. 

Reuchlin was not ignorant of the enemies with whom he had 
to grapple. The Odium Theologicum has been always prover- 
bial ; the Dominicans were exasperated and leagued against him ; 
no opposition had hitherto prevailed against that powerful order, 
who had recently crushed Joannes de Wesalia, for a similar 
oifence, by a similar accusation ; while a contemporary pope 
emphatically declared, that he would rather provoke the enmity 
of the most formidable sovereign, than offend even a single friar 
of those mendicant fraternities, who, under the mantle of humi- 
lity, reigned omnipotent over the Christian world. Reuchlin 
wrote to his friends throughout Europe, entreating their protec- 
tion and interest in obtaining for him new allies. He received 
from all quarters the warmest assurances of sympathy and co- 
operation. Not only in Germany, but in Italy, France, and Eng- 
land, a confederation was organized between the friends of 



HISTORY OF THE REUCHLINIAN PROCESS. 215 

humane learning.* The cause of Reuchlin became the cause of 
letters ; Europe was divided into two hostile parties ; the powers 
of light stood marshalled against the powers of darkness. So 
decisive was this struggle regarded for the interests of literature, 
that the friends of illumination saw, in its unexpected issue, the 
special providence of God;f and so immediate were its conse- 
quences in preparing the religious reformation, that Luther (Dec. 
1518) acknowledges to Reuchlin, that " he only followed in his 
steps, — only consummated Ms victory, with inferior strength, 
indeed, but not inferior courage, in breaking the teeth of the Behe- 
moth." \ It was this contest, indeed, which first proved that the 
nations were awake, and public opinion again the paramount tri- 
bunal. In this tribunal the cause of Reuchlin was in reality 
decided, and his triumph had been long complete before it was 
formally ratified by a papal sentence. Reuchlin's victory, in 
public opinion, was accomplished by a satire ; of which, the ana- 
thema on its publication by the holy see, only gave intensity to 
the effect. — But to return. 

Hoogstraten now cited Reuchlin before the court of Inquisition 
at Mentz, (1513.) Reuchlin declined Hoogstraten as a judge; 
he was his personal enemy, and not his provincial; and when 
these objections were overruled he appealed to the Pope. This 
appeal, notwithstanding, and in contempt of a sist on the pro- 
ceedings by the Elector of Mentz, Hoogstraten and his theologi- 
cal brethren of Cologne condemned, and publicly burned the 
writings of Reuchlin, as " offensive, dangerous to religion, and 
savouring of heresy ; " and to enhance the infamy, they obtained 
from the Sorbonne of Paris, and the Theological Faculties of 
Mentz, Erfurth, and Louvain, an approval of the sentence. Their 
triumph was wild and clamorous, but it was brief. On Reuchlin's 
appeal, the Pope had delegated the investigation to the Bishop of 

* England, for example, sent to the " army of the Reuchlinists," More, 
Fisher, Lynacre, Grocyn, Colet, Latimer, Tunstall, and Ammonius of Lucca ; 
" omnes," says Erasmus to Reuchlin, u Grace docti prater Coletum ; (but 
as we know from Erasmus, Colet soon made of that language an assiduous 
study.) {Epist. ill. Vir. ad Reuchl. L. II. sig. Ti.) We may notice that 
this rare and interesting collection has Jive letters of Erasmus, not to be 
found in any edition of his works. 

f Jo. Caesarius (Ep. ad Reuchl. Lib. II. sig. X. iii.) and Eobanus Hessus 
(ibid. Z. i.) [See Reuchlin's letter at the end of this article.] 

t Epist. ad Reuchl. Lib. II. sig. C. iii. [and in De Wette's Luther's Briefe, 
I. 196.] 



216 EPISTOL.E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

Spires ; and that prelate, without regard to the determinations of 
the reverend faculties, decided summarily in favour of Reuchlin, 
and condemned Hoogstraten in the costs of process, (1514.) It 
was now the Inquisitor's turn to appeal ; [but Reuchlin likewise 
cited him to Rome.*] The cause was referred by Leo to a body 
of commissioners in Rome ; and Hoogstraten, amply furnished 
with money, proceeded to that capital. The process thus pro- 
tracted, every mean was employed by the Dominicans to secure 
a victory. In Rome, they assailed the judges with bribes and 
intimidation. In Germany, they vented their malice, and endea- 
voured to promote their cause by caricatures and libels, among 
which last the Tocsin (Sturmglock,) ostensibly by Pfefferkorn, 
was conspicuous ; while the pulpits resounded with calumnies 
against their victim. 

Amid this impotent discharge of squibs, there was launched, 
from an unknown hand, a pasquil against the persecutors of 
Reuchlin. It fell among them like a bomb, scattering dismay 
and ruin in its explosion. This tremendous satire was the " Epis- 
toloz Obscurorum Virorum ad venerabilem virum Magistrum 
Ortuinum Gratium." Its purport is as follows : — 

Before the commencement of his persecution, Reuchlin had 
published a volume of letters from his correspondents ; and Reuch- 
lin's enemy, Ortuinus, is now, in like manner, supposed to print 
a volume of the epistles addressed to him by friends of his. But 
whilst the correspondents of Ortuinus were, of course, any thing 
but less distinguished than those of Reuchlin, the former is sup- 
posed to entitle his collection — " Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum ad 
Ortuinum,' , in modest ridicule of the arrogance of the " Epistolae 
Illustrium Virorum ad Reuchlinum, virum nostra aetate doctissi- 
mum." f The plan of the satire is thus extremely simple : — to 
make the enemies of Reuchlin and of polite letters represent 
themselves ; and the representation is managed with a truth of 
nature, only equalled by the absurdity of the postures in which 
the actors are exhibited. " Barbare ridentur barbari" say Hut- 
ten himself and Erasmus of the Epistles : and never, certainly, 



* [Sec the letter of Reuchlin (now printed for the first time) at the end of 
the article.] 

t See E. 0. V. Vol. II. Ep. 1. Dr Muench is wrong in supposing that 
" Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," means " Briefe der Finsterftnge." The 
original title does not sufficiently conceal the satire ; the translated openly 
declares it. 



CHARACTER OF THE SATIRE. 217 

were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, intolerant 
stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality, so ludicrously delineated ; 
never, certainly, did delineation less betray the artifice of ridicule. 
The EpistolaB Obscurorum Virorum are at once the most cruel 
and the most natural of satires ; and as such, they were the most 
effective. They converted the tragedy of Reuchlin's persecution 
into a farce ; annihilated in public consideration the enemies of 
intellectual improvement ; determined a radical reform in the 
German universities ; and even the associates of Luther, in 
Luther's lifetime, acknowledged that no other writing had contri- 
buted so powerfully to prepare the downfall of the papal domina- 
tion.* " Veritas non est de ratione faceti ; " but never was argu- 
ment more conducive to the interest of truth. 

Morally considered, indeed, this satire is an atrocious libel, 
which can only be palliated on the plea of retaliation, necessity, 
the importance of the end, and the consuetude of the times. Its 
victims are treated like vermin ; hunted without law, and exter- 
minated without mercy. What truth there may be in the wicked 
scandal it retails, we are now unable to determine. 

Critically considered, its representations may, to a mere modern 
reader, appear to sacrifice verisimilitude to effect. But by those 
who can place themselves on a level with the age in which the 
Epistolae appeared, their ridicule (a few passages excepted) will 
not be thought to have overshot its aim. So truly, in fact, did it 
hit the mark, that the objects of the ridicule themselves, with the 
exception of those who were necessarily in the secret, read the 
letters as the genuine product of their brethren, and even hailed 
the publication as highly conducive to the honour of scholasticism 
and monkery. 

In 1516, immediately after the appearance of the first volume, 
thus writes Sir Thomas More : — " Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum 
opera? pretium est videre quantopere placent omnibus, et doctis 
joco, et indoctis serio, qui, dum ridemus, putant rideri stylum 
tantum, quern illi non defendunt, sed gravitate sententiarum 
dicunt compensatum, et latere sub rudi vagina pulcherrimum 
gladium. Utinam fuisset inditus libello alius titulus ! profecto 



* " Nescio," says Justus Jonas, " an ullum hujus saeculi scriptum sic 
papistico regno nocuerit, sic omnia papistica ridicula reddiderit, ut hae Ob- 
scurorum Virorum Epistolae, quae omnia, minima, maxima, clericorum vitia 
verterint in risum." — Epist. Anonymi ad Crotum. 



218 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

intra centum annos homines studio stupidi non sensissent nasum 
quanqum rhinoeerotico longiorem." (Erasmi Op. iii., p. 1575.) 

" Pessime consuluit," says Erasmus in 1518, " rebus humanis, 
qui titulum indidit Obscurorum Virorum : quod ni titulus prodi- 
disset lusum, et hodie passim legerentur illse Epistoke, tanquam in 
gratiam Prgedicatorum scriptse. Adest hie Lovanii, Magister 
Noster, pridem Prior apud Bruxellas, qui viginti libellos coemerat, 
gratificaturus amicis, paulo antequam Bulla ilia prodiret, quae 
effulminat eum libellum. Primum, optabam non editum, verum 
ubi fuerat editus, optabam ahum titulum." — And again, in a letter 
some ten years thereafter : — " Ubi primum exissent Epistolce 
Obscurorum Virorum miro Monachorum applausu exceptae sunt 
apud Britannos a Franciscanis ac Dominicanis, qui sibi persuade- 
bant eas in Reuchlini contumeliam, et Monachorum favorem, serio 
proditas ; quumque quidam egregie doctus, sed nasutisshnus, fin- 
geret se nonnihil offendi stylo, consolati sunt hominem :— ' Ne 
spectaris,' inquiunt, ' 6 bone, orationis cutem, sed sententiarum 
vim/ Nee hodie deprehendissent, ni quidam, addita epistola, 
lectorem admonuisset rem non esse seriam." (Erasmus probably 
refers to the penult letter of the second volume, in which 
Ortuinus is addressed as " Omnium Barbarorum defensor, qui cla- 
mat more asinino" &c.) " Post, in Brabantia, Prior quidam Do- 
minicanus et Magister Noster, volens innotescere patribus, coemit 
acervum eorum libellorum, ut dono mitteret ordinis Proceribus, 
nihil dubitans quin in ordinis honor em fuissent scriptae. Quis 
fungus possit esse stupidior ! " (Ibid. pp. 1678, 1110.) 

" Quis fungus possit esse stupidior ! " — Erasmus would have 
wondered less at the stupidity of the sufferers, and more, perhaps, 
at the dexterity of the executioner, could he have foreseen, that 
one of the most learned scholars of England, and he the most 
learned of her bibliographers, should have actually republished 
these letters as a serious work ; and that one of our wittiest satir- 
ists should have reviewed that publication, without a suspicion of 
the lurking Momus. And what is almost equally astonishing, 
these absurdities have never been remarked. 

In 1710, there was printed in London the most elegant edition' 

* A re-impression of this edition, and with the name of the same book- 
seller (Clements), appeared in 1742. We know not on what grounds Herr 
Ebert (the highest bibliographical authority certainly in Europe), an 
that this re-impression was, in reality, published in Switzerland. The paper 
and print seem decidedly English. 



CHARACTER OF THE SATIRE. 219 

that has yet appeared of the EpistolaB Obscurorum Virorum, which 
the editor, Michael Maittaire, seriously represents as the produc- 
tion of their ostensible authors, and with a simplicity worthy of 
the Obscure themselves, takes credit to himself for rescuing, as he 
imagines, from oblivion, so curious a specimen of conceited ignor- 
ance, and vain-glorious stupidity. — But what ensued was still more 
wonderful. The edition, Maittaire dedicates " Isaaco Bickerstaff, 
Armigero, Magnce Britannice Censori;" and Steele, in a subse- 
quent number of the Tatler, after acknowledging the compliment, 
thus notices the book itself : — " The purpose of the work is signi- 
fied in the dedication, in very elegant language, and fine rail- 
lery. (!) It seems this is a collection of letters, which some^ro- 
found blockheads, who lived before our times, have written in 
honour of each other, and for their mutual information in each 
other's absurdities. (! !) They are mostly of the German nation, 
whence, from time to time, inundations have flowed, more perni- 
cious to the learned world than the swarms of Goths and Vandals 
to the politic. (!!!) It is, methinks, wonderful, that fellows could 
be awake, and utter such incoherent conceptions, and converse with 
great gravity like learned men, without the least taste of know- 
ledge or good sense. It would have been an endless labour to 
have taken any other method of exposing such impertinencies, 
than by a publication of their own works, where you see their 
follies, according to the ambition of such virtuosi, in a most correct 
edition." (! ! ! !) And so forth. — The monks are no marvel after 
this. 

These letters have been always, however, a stumbling-block to 
our British divines, critics, and historians. 

Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, knows nothing of the Epistolae, 
and less than nothing of their authors. 

Jortin has made as, with his talents, he could hardly fail to 
make, an amusing farrago out of the life and writings of Eras- 
mus ; though not even superficially versed in the literary history 
of the sixteenth century. Of the German language he knows 
nothing ; knows nothing of the most necessary books. He rarely, 
in fact, ventures beyond the text of Erasmus and Le Clerc, without 
stumbling. He confesses to having seen only the first of the three 
volumes of Burckhard's Vita Hutteni; nay that he obtained Burig- 
ny's Vie d'JErasme, only as he had finished his own. Altogether, 
Jortin was not in a position to judge aright the character of 
Erasmus ; nor is he even on his guard against the selfishness, 



220 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

meanness, and timidity of that illustrious genius. Accordingly, all 
the unworthy falsehoods which Erasmus whispers about his former 
friend, are unsuspiciously retailed as truths ; for Jortin was una- 
ware even of the authors by whom these are exposed, and the re- 
putation of Hutten vindicated. Of Hutten, indeed, — his charac- 
ter, genius, writings, and exploits, — he everywhere betrays the 
profoundest ignorance. Nor has he blundered less in regard to 
the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, than in regard to their great 
author. The Jew, PfefFerkorn, he knows only as a writer against 
the Epistolae, and knows not that these were written, among others, 
against him. The Epistolae themselves, which he could never 
have perused, but with which especially, as historian of Eras- 
mus, he ought to have been familiar, he describes as " a piece of 
harmless wit." Finally, in utter unacquaintance with the Fasci- 
culus of Ortuinus, though himself an historian of the Church, and 
that remarkable source of ecclesiastical history, republished in 
England by an Anglican divine ; — he conceives it to be only a 
collection of " Epistolaz Clarorum Virorum," a counterpart and 
precursor, it would appear, to the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, 
published twenty years before, confusing it probably with the 
" Epistolaz Illustrium Virorum ad Reuchlinum" 

A late accomplished author [Lord Woodhouselee), asserts, that 
the Epistolae were written in imitation of Arias Montanus's version 
of the Bible. That learned Spaniard was born some ten years 
subsequent to the supposed parody of his Interpretatio Li- 
teralis. 

The only other notice in English literature of this celebrated 
satire that occurs to us, is an article on the subject, which ap- 
peared a few years ago in the Retrospective Review. We recollect 
it only as a meagre and inaccurate compilation from the most 
superficial authorities. 

No question in the history of letters has been more variously 
answered than that touching the conception and authorship of 
these celebrated epistles. — Reuchlin and Erasmus alone, have, 
for themselves, expressly denied the authorship ; which has been 
otherwise attributed to an individual — to a few — and to many. 

An individual. — Jovius, Valerius Andreas, Koch, Opmeer, 
Maius, Naude, Gehres, and others, hold Reuchlin himself to have 
been sole author. Caspar Barthius, J. Thomasius, Tribbechovius, 
Morhoff, Loescher, Weislinger, and Schurzfleisch, attribute thorn 
more or less exclusively to Hutten. Du Pin gives them to 



OPINIONS TOUCHING THEIR AUTHORSHIP. 221 

Reuchlin or to Hutten. Justus Jonas, Olearius, Kapp and Wel- 
ler, assign them to Crotus. Some, as Sonleutner, have given 
them to Eobanus Hessus ; — others to Erasmus ; — and others to 
Euricius Cordus ; — Goldastus, again, refers them to Brussianus ; 
— and Gisbert Voetius to the poet-laureate Glareanus. 

A few. — Gundling views Reuchlin as the exclusive writer of 
the first part, assisted by Erasmus and Hutten in the second. — 
In both volumes, Hutten has been regarded as the principal, 
Crotus as the assistant, by the Unschuldige Nachrichten of 
1716, Veller, Meiners, Panzer, and Lobstein. — But C. G. Muel- 
ler and Erhard view Crotus as sole author of the first volume, 
and Hutten, perhaps others, as his coadjutors in the second. — 
Angst, as deviser of the whole, and exclusive writer of the first 
volume, and, with the aid of Hutten, Crotus, and others, as prin- 
cipal author of the second, has found an advocate in Mohnicke. — 
Finally, by some anonymous writers Hutten and Eobanus have 
been viewed as joint authors of both volumes. 

Many. — Hamelmann bestows the joint honour, among others, 
on Count Nuenar, Hutten, Reuchlin, and Buschius ; — to whom 
Reichenberg adds Erasmus, and Caisarius ; — whilst Freitag 
divides it between Crotus, Hutten, Buschius, Aesticampianus, 
Caisarius, Reuchlin, Pirkheimer, Glandorpius, and Eobanus. — 
Burckhard originally gave the authorship of the whole to Hutten, 
Nuenar, Reuchlin, Buschius, and Caisarius, with Stromer and 
Pirkheimer as probable coadjutors ; but after the publication of 
the " Epistola Anonymi ad Crotum," to Hutten and Crotus, as 
inventors and principal writers of both volumes, assisted by Nue- 
nar, Aesticampianus, Buschius, Ccesarius, Reuchlin, Pirkheimer, 
and possibly Eobanus. — Burigny (with Revius ?) makes Hutten 
the sole or principal author, if not assisted by Reuchlin, Eoba- 
nus, Buschius, Caisarius, and Nuenar. — Nicer on attributes them 
to Hutten, Reuchlin, Nuenar, Crotus, and others. — Heumannus 
and Stoll regard Hutten as the chief author, aided by various 
friends, among whom the former particularises James Fuchs. — 
By Meusel, Crotus is supposed to have conceived the plan, and, 
along with Hutten, to be the principal writer of the first part, 
not unaided, however, by Buschius and Aesticampianus ; to the 
composition of the second, Nuenar, Pirkheimer, Fuchs, and per- 
haps others, contributed their assistance. — Ruhkopf assumes as 
authors, Reuchlin, Hutten, Eobanus, Cordus, Crotus, Buschius, 
&c. — By Scheibe thev are held to have been Crotus, Hutten, 



222 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

Buschius, Nuenar, Pirkheimer, and others. — Wachler holds 
Crotus to be the writer of the first volume, Hutten and others to 
be authors of the second. — Dr Muench, in his matured opi- 
nion, considers Hutten and Crotus as principals, assisted more or 
less by Eobanus, Aesticampianus, Buschius, Ccesarius, Pirkhei- 
mer, Angst, Franz von Sickingen, and Fuchs. Muench's unex- 
clusive views have found favour with Mayerhoff and Eichstadt. — 
The former regards Crotus and Angst, exclusively of Hutten, as 
authors of the first book ; and of the second, Hutten, Buschius, 
Crotus, Pirkheimer, perhaps also Eobanus, Caisarius, Angst, 
Fuchs, Aesticampianus, and Sickingen. — The latter ascribes the 
authorship of the first book to Crotus, Buschius, and Pirkheimer ; 
and of the second, along with these, to Hutten, Eobanus, Angst, 
Sickingen, and others. To these he finally adds Melanchthon. 

The preceding summary, which affords a far more complete 
enumeration than has yet been attempted of the various opinions 
on this question, shows how greatly any adequate criticism of the 
different hypotheses would exceed our limits : — if that indeed 
were worth while ; for the fact of the variation is itself proof 
sufficient, that all opinion is as yet baseless conjecture. Our obser- 
vations {(pau Aura, avvirmai) shall only be in supplement to what is 
already known. Suffice it to say, that as yet there has been 
adduced no evidence of any weight to establish the co-operation 
of other writers in these letters, besides Ulrich von Hutten and 
Crotus Rubianus ; and, independent of the general presumption 
against an extensive partnership, there is proof sufficient to ex- 
clude many of the most likely of those to whom the work has 
been attributed — in particular, Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Eobanus. 
We propose to show that Hutten, Crotus, and Buschius are 
the joint authors ; and this, in regard to the first and last, by 
evidence not hitherto discovered. 

Crotus. — The share of Crotus is, we conceive, sufficiently 
established by the anonymous letter addressed to him by a 
friend on his return to the Catholic Church ; and this friend, 
there is every reason to believe, was Justus Jonas. Crotus and 
Hutten were bosom friends from almost childhood to death ; and, 
as boys, they had fled together from the Monastery of Fulda 
to the University of Cologne. — The co-operation of Crotus, we 
assume. 

Hutten. — Doubts have been of late thrown on Hutten 's parti- 
cipation, at least in the first volume of the Epistolae, founded on 



HUTTEN, CROTUS, BUSCHIUS THEIR AUTHORS.— HUTTEN. 228 

his two letters to Richard Croke, discovered and published by 
C. G. Mueller in 1801. More might be added to what Dr 
Muench has acutely alleged in disproof of the inference which 
Mueller has deduced from these ; * but we shall not pause to show 
that Hutten could have been a writer of the volume in question ; 
we shall at once demonstrate that he must. 

The middle term of our proof is the Triumphus Capnionis. 
This must, therefore, be vindicated to Hutten. Mohnicke has, 
with considerable ingenuity, recently attempted to invalidate the 
grounds on which Hutten had been hitherto recognised as the 
author of this poem. Added, however, to the former evidence, 
the proof which we shall now adduce appears to us decisive in 
favour of the old opinion. — A letter of Erasmus to Count Nuenar, 
in August 1517, to say nothing of the twenty-fifth letter of the 
first volume of the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, proves that 
the Triumphus Capnionis was ready for publication two years 
before, and that at his instance it had been then suppressed. In 
point of fact, it was only printed in 1519. This being under- 
stood, the following coincidence of thought and expression between 
letters of Hutten, all written one, two, or three years before the 
publication of the Triumphus, and the Triumphus itself, can be 
rationally explained only on the hypothesis that both were the 
productions of the same mind. 

In the Letter to Nuenar, April 1518, speaking of the Domini- 
cans, and their persecution of true learning and religion, Hutten 
says : — " Quodsi me audiat Germania, quanquam inferre Turcis 
bellum necesse est hoc tempore, prius tamen huic intestino malo 
remedium opponere quam de Asiatica expeditione cogitare ius- 
sero," ets. ; then immediately follows a mention of the famous 
imposture of the Dominicans of Berne, which he calls the " Ber- 
nense Scelus." In the Preface of the Triumphus, on the other 
hand, immediately after noticing, in the same words, the " Ber- 
nense Scelus," the author adds, in reference also to the Domini- 
cans and their hostility to polite letters and rational theology, 

* For example : — Mueller (with Boehmius — indeed, with all others, as to 
the former,) is wrong in regard to two essential points. — 1°, Croke did not 
first come to Leipsic in 1515. " Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, pub- 
lice docens Graecas literas," says Erasmus in a letter to Linacer, of June 
1514. (Op. t. iii. p. 136.)— 2°, The first edition of the Erasmian Testament 
appeared in March 1516 (Wetstein Proleg.), and the Letter of Erasmus to 
Leo. X., relative thereto, is Aug. 1515, not 1516, as alleged by Mueller. 



224 EPISTOLvE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

" Quippe Turcos nego, aut ardentiori dignos odio, aut majori 
oppugnandos opere," ets. — Again, in the same Letter, Hutten 
writes : — " In Italia certe nostri me puduit, quoties de Capnionis 
afflictione, orto cum Italis sermone, illi percontarentur, tantum, 
licet in Germania fratribus ': '" In the Preface to the Triumphus, 
the author says : — " Memini opprobratam nobis in Italia hominis 
(Hogostrati sc.) insolentiam. Tantum, inquit aliquis, licet in 
Germania fratribus ?" — Again, in the same Letter, Peter Mayer 
and Bartholomew Zehender, are vituperated in conjunction : so 
also in the Triumphus. — Again, in the Letter it is said : — " Petrus 
Mayer indoctissimus...audax tamen." In the Triumphus, the 
marginal title is Petrus Mayer indoctissimus," and in the text 
" nemo est ex vulgo indoctior ipso, Audax nemo magis," (v. 824.) 
— Again, in the Letter, it is said of " Bartholomozus qui Deci- 
mator," " simile quid scorpionibus habet." In the Triumphus 
" Bart7iolomo3us Zehender qui et Decimator" as he is styled in 
the running title, is thus addressed in the text, (v. 772,) " Mitte 
hue te Vipera." — Again, in his Letter to Gerbellius, August 
1516, Hutten extols Eeuchlin and Erasmus, " per eos enim bar- 
bar a esse desinit haze natio ( Germania sc.) So in the Triumphus, 
(v. 964,) Germania lauds Reuchlin, per te ne barbara dicar Aut 
rudis effectum est." — Again, in the conclusion of Hutten's letter 
to Pirkheimer, (August 1518,) we find " accipe laqueum, bar- 
baries," and in the address to the " Theologista?," closing the 
Triumphus, we have " proinde laqueum sumite," and " obscuris 
viris laqueum prsebens ;" while in both, this expression follows an 
animated picture of the rapid progress of polite literature. — In 
like manner, compare what is said in Hutten's Lettei to Croke, 
August 1516, " Sententia non jam de Capnione, sed de nostris 
communibus studiis lata," with the text of the Triumphus, (too 
long to quote,) of which the marginal summary is, " Capnion com- 
munis libertatis assertor," (v. 917.) — Also the same series of crimes 
is imputed to the Predicant Friars, and raked up, in the same 
manner, in Hutten's Intercessio pro Capnione, and in two places 
of the Triumphus (v. 305, ets. and v. 400, ets.) — Though less 
remarkable, we may likewise adduce the expression, " rumpantur 
ut ilia," applied to the Friars, both in Hutten's Letter to Eras- 
mus, (July 1517,) and Preface to the Nemo, and in the Trium- 
phus, (v. 378.) — The " Jacta est alea," in the final address of 
the Triumphus, was subsequently Hutten's peculiar motto in his 
various polemical writings against the court of Rome ; as shortly 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS ■ HUTTEN. 225 

before, it had been first adopted by him in his invectives against 
Duke Ulrich of Wirtemberg. — The occurrence also of the unusual 
proverbial allusion, " herbam porrigens," in Hutten's Preface to 
the Nemo, and " herbam sumemus," in the conclusion of the Tri- 
umphus, is not without its weight. — It may also be observed, 
that the author of the Triumphus and Hutten agree in always 
using the form Capnion and not Capnio, and in the employment 
(usque nauseam) of the terms Theologistae, Sophwtae, Curtisani, 
&c. 

[Since writing the above, I have met with the very highest 
testimony to Hutten's authorship of the Triumphus, by his friend 
Camerarius, in the life of his friend Melanchthon. The words are : 
— " Hujus (Hutteni sc.) est carmen triumphale victoriae Reuchlini, 
cum pictura," &c. (Sub a. 1514.) All doubt becomes, in these 
circumstances, ridiculous ; and I suppress other internal evidence, 
evidence which I am able to produce.] 

Hutten, thus proved the author of the Triumphus Capnionis, is, 
by a similar comparison of that work with the Epistolae Obscu- 
rorum Virorum, shown to be a writer of the first, no less than 
of the second, volume of these letters. — The Triumphus, be it 
remembered, was ready for publication before the first volume 
of the Epistolae, in the twenty -fifth letter of which it is, indeed, 
spoken of as already written. Thus, no allusion occurs in the 
Triumphus to the Epistolae ; but the expression, obscuri viri, in 
the peculiar signification of the Epistolae, which is employed at 
least five times in the Triumphus, argues strongly for the com- 
mon origin of both. The following are, however, far more signal 
coincidences. — In the Triumphus, (v. 309, ets.) speaking of the 
crimes of the Dominicans, the marginal title bears " Henricus 
Imp. sacramento intoxicatus" In the Epistolae, (vol. I., ep. 35,) 
speaking, in like manner, of the crimes of the same order, 
Magister Lyra reports that it is written from Rome, that, as a 
punishment for their falsification of Heuchlin's Eyeglass, these 
friars are to be condemned to wear a pair of white spectacles on 
their black cowls, (in allusion to the name of that pamphlet, and 
on the titlepage of which a pair of large black spectacles appears,) 
" sicut jam etiam debent pati unum scandalum in celebratione 
missali, propter intoxicationem alicujus Imperatoris." The allu- 
sion to the poisoning of Henry VII. in both, is remarkable ; but 
the coincidence is carried to its climax, by the employment, in 
each, of so singular, and so unlikely a barbarism, (at least in the 



226 EPISTOL^ OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

Triumphus) as intoxicatus and intoxicatio, — terms unknown even 
in the iron age of Latinity. — An equally striking conformity is 
found between a passage in the Triumphus, (v. 269 — 302,) 
where Hutten asserts, firstly, the superiority of Reuchlin's theo- 
logical learning, as contrasted with that of his persecutors, and 
secondly, his equal participation with them in the gift of the Holy 
Spirit, — and a passage in the fifth letter of the first volume of the 
Epistolse, in which the same attributes are affirmed of the same 
persons, in the same relation, and in the same consecution. — 
Hutten's co-operation in the first volume is thus evinced ; and 
his co-operation there, to any extent, is proved by establishing his 
co-operation at all. 

Hutten's participation in the second volume has been less dis- 
puted than his share in the first. Besides the evidence already 
stated by others, we may refer to the intended persecution of 
Erasmus for his edition of the New Testament, as stated in the 
letter of Hutten to Pirkheimer, from Bologna, June 1517, and in 
the forty-ninth letter of the second volume of the Epistola?. — Also 
to the " conjuratio " and " conjurati " (a remarkable expression) 
in favour of Reuchlin against the theologians, in the address ap- 
pended to the Triumphus, and in the ninth letter of the latter 
part of the Epistola3. 

The parallelisms we have hitherto adduced are sufficiently con- 
vincing in themselves ; but they are far more conclusive when we 
consider ; — 1°, how narrow is the sphere within which they are 
found; and 2°, that similar repetitions are frequent in the un- 
doubted works of Hutten. — As to the former ; the letters of Hut- 
ten, belonging to the period, and the Triumphus, extend only to 
a few pages ; and we defy any one to discover an equal number 
of equally signal coincidences (plagiarism apart) from the works 
of any two authors, allowing him to compare as many volumes 
as, in the present case, we have collated paragraphs. — As to the 
latter ; nothing but a fear of trespassing on the patience of the 
reader prevents us from adducing the most ample evidence of the 
fact. 

Buschius. — We now proceed to state the grounds on which we 
contend that there were three principal, or rather, perhaps, three 
exclusive, authors of the work in question ; and that the celebrated 
Hermann von dem Busclie, or, as he is more familiarly known to 
scholars, Hermannus Buschkis, completes, with Hutten and Cro- 
tus, this memorable triumvirate. 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS ; BUSCHIUS. 227 

Ortuinus Gratius, who may be allowed to have had a shrewd 
guess at his tormentors, not only in his Lamentationes Virorum 
Obscurorum* immediately after the appearance of the Epistolae, 
but, what has not been observed, twenty years thereafter in his 
Fasciculus Rerwn Expetendarum,^ asserts that the Epistolae were 
the work of several authors, and states, even in the former, that 
their names were known. — Erasmus, who enjoyed the best oppor- 
tunities of information, J and in circumstances under which it was 
no longer a point of delicacy to dissemble his knowledge, asserts 
that the authors of the Epistolae were three. " Equidem non 
ignorabam auctores. Nam tres fuisse ferebantur. In neminem 
derivavi suspicionem." || This testimony is at once the most 

* P. 116, ed. 1649. It has been doubted whether Ortuinus be the real 
author of the Lamentationes, and whether that silly rejoinder be the work of 
an Anti-Keuchlinist at all. The affirmative we could fully establish by pas- 
sages from the works of Hutten and Erasmus which have been wholly over- 
looked ; — but it is not worth while. 

f T. I., p. 479, (Brown's edition.) Dr Muench and others conceive, that 
this work is palpably pseudonymous. He could hardly have read what Cle- 
ment (Bibl. Cm-, t. viii. p. 244, ets.) has said upon this subject ; and in addi- 
tion to the observations of that acute bibliographer we may notice, that the 
Fasciculus is not hostile to Catholicism ; its purport is only to maintain that 
for which the Universities in general, and Paris and Cologne in particular, 
had always strenuously contended, — that a Council was paramount to the 
Pope, and that a council was the only mean, at that juncture, of reconciling 
the dissensions in religion. Ortuinus's zeal in the cause was probably any 
thing but allayed by the papal decision in the case of Reuchlin. N.B. The 
marginal notes in the English edition are, for the greater part, by the pro- 
testant editor ; an ignorance of this may have occasioned the misapprehen- 
sion. 

X He was the familiar friend of the whole circle of those who either wrote 
the work, or knew by whom it was written, — of Hutten, Crotus, Buschius, 
Nuenar, Cassarius, Pirkheimer, Eobanus, Angst, Stromer, &c. Some of the 
Epistolse were even communicated to him before publication, and the design 
and execution vehemently applauded. He himself expressly acknowledges 
one, attributed to Hutten ; and Justus Jonas, his friend, asserts that they 
were copied by him, and dispatched to his correspondents, committed 
to memory, and recited in company. Nay, they are said to have cured an 
imposthume on his face by the laughter they excited. He was thus mani- 
festly not only able to discover the history of the composition, but strongly 
interested in the discovery. The selfishness and caution of his own charac- 
ter are slyly hit off in the second volume — "Erasmus est homo pro se; " and 
we should be disposed to attribute the clamour of his subsequent disapproba- 
tion to personal pique, as much, at least, as to virtuous indignation, or even 
timidity. 

|| Spongia adv. asp. Hutteni (Opera, t. x. c. 1640, ed. Clerici.) 



228 EPIST0L7E OBSCUROMJM VIRORUM. 

cogent and most articulate that exists ; so strong is it, that 
we at once accept it, even against the presumption that an effu- 
sion of so singular a character, of such uniform excellence, and 
rising so transcendently above the numerous attempts at imitation, 
could have emanated only from a single genius. To suppose the 
co-operation of a plurality of minds, each endowed with the rare 
ability necessary for such a work, is in itself improbable, and 
the improbability rises in a geometrical ratio to the number of 
such minds which the hypothesis assumes. In the present case, 
the weight of special evidence in favour of plurality is sufficient to 
counterbalance, to a certain extent, the general presumption in 
favour of unity. But gratuitously to postulate, as has been so 
frequently done, all and sundry not disinclined to Reuchlin, to 
have been able to write, and actually to have assisted in writing 
this masterpiece of wit, is of all absurdities the greatest. The 
law of parsimony is overcome by the irrecusable testimony of 
Ortuinus and Erasmus, so far as to compel us to admit a plurality 
of authors, and that to the amount of three ; but philosophical pre- 
sumption, and historical evidence, combine in exploding the sup- 
position of a greater number. 

Of these three authors, tiuo are already found. — We could prove, 
we think, by exclusion, that no other, besides Buschius, was at all 
likely to have been the third. But as this negative would be 
tedious, we shall only attempt the positive, by showing that every 
circumstance concurs in pointing out that distinguished scholar as 
the colleague of Hutten and Crotus. The name of Buschius has 
once and again been mentioned, among the other wellwishers of 
Reuchlin, as a possible author of this satire ; but whilst no evi- 
dence has yet been led, to show that his participation in that work 
was probable, grounds have been advanced, and still remain 
unanswered, which would prove this participation to have been 
impossible. 

We must therefore refute, as a preliminary, this alleged impos- 
sibility. — " Hamelmann," says Meiners, whose authority on this 
question is deservedly of the highest, "believes that Hermann 
von dem Busche had a share in the Epistolae Obscurorum Viro- 
rum. This supposition is contradicted by the chronology of these 
letters, which were written and printed previously to the return 
of Von dem Busche to Germany." * This objection, of which 

* Lebensbeschr. ber. Maenner, II. p. 380. 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS • BUSCHIUS. 229 

Muench was not aware, is established on Hamelmann's biography 
of Busehius ; and, if true, it would be decisive. We can prove, 
however, that Busehius was not only in Germany, but resident 
at Cologne for a considerable time previous to the printing of the 
first volume of the Epistoloz, and continued to reside there, until 
about the date of the publication of the second* — Busehius was 
teaching in the university of Cologne, soon after the publication 
of the Praenotamenta of Ortuinus, in 1514, as is proved by the 
letter of Magister Hipp, the 17th in the first volume of the Epis- 
tolae. In the 19th letter of the second volume, Magister Schlauraff, 
at the commencement of his peregrination, leaves Busehius in 
Rostoch, but at its termination finds him teaching in Cologne ; 
while the 46th of the same volume speaks of him as then (i. e. 
1516) a rival of Ortuinus in that school. Glareanus in his Epistle 
to Reuchlin, dated from Cologne, January 1514, speaks of Bus- 
ehius as resident in that city. (111. Vir. Ep. ad Reuchl. X hi.) 
The letter of Busehius himself to Reuchlin, written in October, 
i( from his own house in Cologne," is checked by the events to 
which it alludes to the year 1515, (Ibid. Y i.) ; and, finally, we 
find him addressing to Erasmus a poetical congratulation on his 
entry into that city in 1516, (Erasmi Opera III. c. 198 and c. 
1578, ed. Clerici.) Busehius could not thus have left Cologne, 
before the middle or end of the year 1516, (his absentation at that 
juncture becomes significant;) and when recalled from England to 
Cologne in 1517, by Count Nuenar, Dean of the Canonical Chap- 
ter, that nobleman, with all his influence, was unable to support 
him against the hostility of the Monks and Magistri Nostri, 
Hoogstraten, Ortuinus & Co., to whom, if a known or suspected 
contributor to the Epistolae, he would now have become more than 
ever obnoxious. Erasmus found him at Spires in 1518. — So far, 
therefore, from being placed beyond the sphere of co-operation 
during the concoction of the Epistolae, he was for the whole period 
at its very centre. 

But his participation is not simply possible, — it is highly pro- 
bable. 

In the first place, his talents were not only of the highest order, 
and his command over the Latin tongue in all its applications 

* Meiners, it may be observed, makes the appearance of the first volume 
of the Epistolae a year too late. This was in 1515, or, at latest, in the be- 
ginning of 1516 ; while the second volume was published towards the end of 
1516, or early in 1517. 



230 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

almost unequalled, but his genius and character in strict analogy 
with the work in question. The Epistola3 Obscurorum Viroruin 
are always bitterly satirical, and never scrupulously decent.* The 
writings of Buschius, — his OE strum, his Epistola pro Reuchlino, his 
Concio ad Clerum Coloniensem, his Vallum Humanitatis, to say 
nothing of others, — are just a series of satires, and satires of precisely 
the same tendency as that pasquil. The Vallum, by which he is 
now best known to scholars, Erasmus prevailed on him to soften 
down ; it still remains sufficiently caustic. His epigrams show that, 
in his writings, he did not pique himself on modesty ; while the 
exhortation of the worthy Abbot Trithemius, " ut ita viveret ne 
moribus destrueret eruditionem," proves that he was no rigorist 
in conduct. 

In the second place, in thus maintaining the cause of Reuchlin 
he was most effectually maintaining his own. 

In the third place, Ortuinus Gratius, to whom the Epistolse 
Virorum Obscurorum are addressed, is the principal victim of 
this satire, though not a prominent enemy of Reuchlin, — far less 
of Hutten and Crotus. But he was the literary opponent, and 
personal foe of Buschius. Westphalians by birth, Ortuinus and 
Buschius were countrymen ; they had also been schoolfellows at 
Daventer, under the celebrated Hegius. But as they were not 
allies, their early connexion made them only the more bitter ad- 
versaries. Buschius, the champion of scholastic reform, was 
opposed by Ortuinus, with no sincerity of conviction, but all the 
vehemence of personal animosity, in his endeavours to extermi- 
nate the ancient grammars, which, having for ages perpetuated 
barbarism in the schools and universities, were now loathed as 
philological abominations by the restorers of ancient learning. 
Buschius had thus not only general reasons to contemn Ortuinus, 
as a renegade from the cause of illumination, but private motives 
to hate him as a hypocritical and malevolent enemy. The attack 
of Ortuinus is accordingly keenly retorted by Buschius in the 

* This excludes Eobanus Hcssus, of whom we know from Erasmus, 
Joachim Camcrarius, and Melchior Adamus, (to say nothing of the negative 
evidence of his own writings,) that he was morbidly averse from satire and 
obscenity. Muench, who comprises Eobanus (he has it uniformly Erban) 
in his all-comprehensive hypothesis of authorship, makes him writer of the 
tract De Fide Mcretricum. He was not ; and if he were, the author of that 
wretched twaddle was certainly no author of the Epistolse Obscurorum 
Virorum. 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS ; BUSCHIUS. 231 

preface to his second edition of Donatus, as it is also ridiculed in 
the 9th and 32d letters of the first volume of the Epistolse Obscu- 
rorum Virorum. 

In the fourth place, the scandal about the family and parentage 
of Ortuinus, (and he is the only one of the Obscure whose birth 
is satirized,) seems to indicate the information of a country- 
man ; and with every allowance for exaggeration, still even the 
contradictions of his sacerdotal filiation, which Ortuinus found 
it necessary to publish in his various works subsequent to the 
Epistolse, preserve always a suspicious silence touching his 
mother. 

In the fifth place, Buschius was the open and strenuous partisan 
of Reuchlin, in whose cause he published, along with Nuenar and 
Hutten, a truculent invective against the Apologia of Hoog- 
straten. He is always, indeed, found enumerated among the 
most active and prominent of the Reuchlinists. In evidence of 
this, we regret that we cannot quote from the Epistolse illustrium 
Virorum ad Reuchlinum, the letters of Nuenar (T iii.), of Glare- 
anus (X iii.), and of Eobanus (Y iii.), and from the Epistolse 
Obscurorum Virorum, the 59th letter of the second volume ; in all 
of which, the mention made of Buschius is on various accounts 
remarkable. 

In the sixth place, Buschius was also the intimate friend of 
Crotus and Hutten ; and among the letters to which we last 
referred, those of Nuenar and Eobanus significantly notice his 
co-operation in aid of Reuchlin with these indubitable authors of 
the work in question. His attachment to Hutten was so strong, 
that it lost him, in the end, the friendship of his schoolfellow 
Erasmus. 

In the seventh place, Cologne and Leipsic are the universities 
prominently held up to ridicule throughout the Epistolse. We 
see why, in the cause of Reuchlin, the Magistri JNostri of Cologne 
should be especial objects of attack ; — but why those of Leipsic ? 
Leipsic was not even one of the universities which had concurred 
with Cologne in condemning the Augenspiegel of Reuchlin. With 
the Leipsic regents, neither Hutten nor Crotus had any collision ; 
nor, as far as we are aware, any intercourse. They are assailed, 
however, with a perseverance and acrimony betraying personal 
rancour, and with a minuteness of information competent only to 
one who had been long resident among them. The problem is 
at once solved, if we admit the participation of Buschius. This 



232 EPISTOLvE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

scholar had grievous injuries to avenge, not only on the obscu- 
rants of Cologne, but on those of Leipsic. The influence of 
Hoogstraten, Tungern, and their adherents, had banished him 
from Cologne about the year 1500 ; and on both his subsequent 
returns to that university, he remained at open war with its 
Theologians and " Artists." * After his first expulsion from Co- 
logne, he had, for six years, taught in Leipsic with the greatest 
reputation ; but the jealousy of the barbarians being roused by 
the preponderance which he had given to the study of polite 
letters, he was constrained by their vexations to abandon that 
university in 1510, and the extrusion of his friend Aesticampi- 
anus was adjourned only until the following year. The letter 
of Magister Hipp, in the first volume of the Epistolae, (Ep. 17,) 
in which the persecution of Aesticampianus by the Leipsic masters 
is minutely described, and that of Buschius wholly overpast, 
betrays the hand of Buschius himself. Throughout these let- 
ters, indeed, the notices of Von dem Busche, as of Hutten and 
Crotus, harmonize completely with the hypothesis of author- 
ship. 

But, in the eighth place, we are not altogether left to general 
probabilities. The single letter of Buschius to Reuchlin, com- 
pared with some of the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, supplies 
conformities, that go far of themselves to establish an identity of 
authors. (Ep. ad Reuchl. L. ii. Y.) Among other parallelisms, 
compare, in the former, the threat of the Anti-Beuchlinists, 
in the event of the Pope deciding against them, to effect a 
schism in the Church, with the same in the 57th Epistle of the 
second volume of the latter ; — their menace, in the former, of ap- 
pealing to a Council, with the same in the 12th Epistle of the first 
volume of the latter ; and their disparagement of the Pope, and a 
papa] sentence, in the former, with the same in the 11th and 12th 
Epistles of the first volume of the latter. 

We do not pretend that the circumstantial evidence now ad- 
duced amounts to absolute certainty. It affords, however, the 
highest probability ; and is at least sufficient, in the present state 
of the question, to vindicate against every other competitor, the 
claim of Buschius to the third place in the triumvirate to whom 
the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum are to be ascribed. 

* How fond Buschius was of every joke against Hoogstraten, may be 
seen from his correspondence with Erasmus. (Erasmi opera, t. iii. cc. 1682, 
1683.) 



CHARACTER OF MUENCH'S EDITION. 233 

It now remains to say a few words on Dr Muench's perform- 
ances as editor. — A satisfactory edition of the Epistolse Obscuro- 
rum Virorum required : 1°, A history of the circumstances which 
determined the appearance and character of the satire, including 
an inquiry into its authors ; 2°, A critical discussion of the various 
editions of the work ; 3°, A correct text founded on a collation 
of all the original editions, the omissions, interpolations, and 
variations of each being distinguished; and, 4°, A commentary 
on the frequent allusions to things and persons requiring ex- 
planation. 

In regard to the first of these conditions, Dr Muench has added 
nothing, — and not a little was wanting. To explain the general re- 
lations of the satire, it was not sufficient to narrate the steps of 
the Reuchlinian process as an isolated event ; nor in compiling 
this narrative (for it shows no original research), has he even 
copied his predecessors without inaccuracy. His disquisition 
touching the origin of the work, from his omission of all refer- 
ences, can only be understood by those who are already conver- 
sant with the discussion ; his statement of the different opinions 
in regard to the authorship, is at second hand, and very incom- 
plete; and his own hypothesis on the subject good for nothing. 

In regard to the second condition, Dr Muench has committed a 
momentous blunder relative to the appendix of seven, or more 
properly six, letters which were added to the third edition of the 
first volume, — an edition which probably appeared within a year 
after the first edition of the first volume, and almost certainly be- 
fore the publication of the second volume. With Panzer (whom 
he makes of Leipsic /) and Ebert, — nay even with what he him- 
self has transcribed from these bibliographers, before his eyes, 
his blunder is inconceivable. From a note to the first of these 
additional letters (p. 146), compared with his account of the 
fourth edition, that of 1556 (p. 70), he evidently imagines these 
six letters to have been first published and appended in that 
edition along with the Epistola imperterriti Fratris, &c. " The 
following letters," he says, " are added only in the later edi- 
tions, and their author, as well as the occasion of their compo- 
sition, unknown. In all probability they were the work of the 
still living authors of the first and second volumes." — Some lesser 
errors under this head we overpass, as Muench is here only a 
copyist, 

The third condition, though of primary importance, and com- 



234 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

paratively easy, our author has not fulfilled. He professes to 
have printed the first volume from its second edition ; he does 
not inform us from what edition he printed the second volume, or 
the appendix to the first. He has instituted no collation of the 
original editions : and nothing can exceed the negligence, we 
shall not say ignorance, which even this uncollated text displays. 
It was the primary duty of an editor to have furnished a text, 
purified at least from the monstrous typographical errors with 
which all former editions abound. The present edition only adds 
new blunders to the old.* These errata we should refer to a 
culpable negligence, were it not that Dr Muench is occasionally 
guilty of blunders, which can only be explained by a defective 
scholarship, and an ignorance of literary history. Thus, in his 
introduction (pp. 55, 56), he repeatedly adduces a passage from 
one of Hutten's letters, beginning rumpantur utilia, though every 
schoolboy would at once read rumpantur ut ilia. 

To the accomplishment of the fourth condition, Dr Muench 
has contributed little or nothing. JSTo work more required, as 
none better deserved, a commentary, than the Epistolas. Our 
editor has, however, attempted no illustration of the now obscure 
allusions with which they everywhere abound, — no difficult under- 
taking to one versed in the scholastic philosophy, and the general 
literature of the period ; but the biographical notices he has ven- 
tured to append, of a very few of the persons mentioned in the 
text, significantly prove his utter incompetence to the task. 
These meagre notices are gleaned from the most vulgar sources, 
and one or two examples will afford a sufficient sample of their 
inaccuracy. 

The celebrated poet, Joannes Baptista (Hispaniolus, Spagnoli) 
Mantuanus, General of the Carmelites, who died in March 1516,t 

* Dipping here and there at random, we notice : p. 158, Wesatio for Wesa~ 
Ho, an old and important erratum ; p. 192, posit ionem for potionem, old error; 
p. 132, Stidteti for Sculteti, ditto; p. 133, succo taphaniana drachmas iii., for 
succo raphani ana drachmas iii.; p. 88, nostrum. Petrum for nostrum, P., 
old error ; p. 98, quot libeta for quodlibeta ; p. 138, praeputiati for non prae- 
putiati; ibid., non praeputiati for praeputiati, old error ; p. 139, fuit promo- 
tus for fid promotus, old error ; p. 203, cum contra scmel articulos habuit 
Petrum, &c., for c. h. s. a. c. P. ; p. 204, parem for patrem ; p. 137, indo.ri- 
cationem for intoxicationem ; pp. 162, 1G3, solarium for salarium, old error, 
&c, &c. 

t The allusion to the death of Mantuanus, in the twelfth letter of the 
second volume of the Epistolre, thus checks, to a certain point, the date of 



CHARACTER OF MUENCH'S EDITION. 235 

he mistakes, and in the very face of the Epistolse, for the obscure 
physician, Baptista Fiera (he writes it Finra) Mantuanus, who 
died at a much later period. 

Every tyro in the literary history of the middle ages, and of 
the revival of letters, is familiar with the name, at least, of Alex- 
ander de Villa Dei or Dolensis, whose Latin Grammar, the Doc- 
trinale Puerorum, reigned omnipotent throughout the schools of 
Europe, from the beginning of the 13th to the beginning of the 
16th century. The struggle for its expulsion was one of the 
most prominent events in the history of the restoration of classical 
studies in Germany ; and the Epistola3 Obscurorum Virorum are 
full of allusions to the contest. Yet Dr Muench knows nothing 
of Alexander. " Gallus Alexander," says he, " as it appears, an 
able grammarian of the fifteenth century, an experienced casuist," 
&c. — all utterly wrong, even to the name. 

Of the notorious Wigand Wirt, Dr Muench states that he was 
one of the Dominicans executed at Berne, for the celebrated im- 
posture, in 1509. Though probably the deviser of that fraud, he 
was not among its victims ; and had Dr Muench read the Epis- 
tolse he edits, with the least attention, he would have seen that 
Wigand is in them accused of being the real author of the Sturm- 
gloch, (Alarum,) written against Keuchlin, in 1514, and that he is 
living in 1516. (Vol. I. App. Ep. 6.) 

Our editor confounds Bartholomew Zehender or Decimator of 
Mentz, with Bartholomseus Coloniensis of Minden. The former 
was one of the most ignorant and intolerant of the Anti-Reuch- 
linists ; the latter, the scholar of Hegius, the friend of Erasmus, 
(who styles him, vir eruditione singulari,) and the ally of Buschius, 
Aesticampianus, and Csesarius, had been banished from his native 
city, for his exertions in the cause of classical Latinity, by the per- 
secutors of Reuchlin themselves. 

What we have said will suffice to show that these letters still 
await their editor. Let the Germans beware. The work is of 
European interest : and, if they are not on the alert, the Epistola? 
Obscurorum Virorum may, like the poems of Lotichius, find a 
foreign commentator.* 

its composition, and would prove that it was written in Italy, consequently 
by Hutten. This, which has not been observed, is important. 

* Another edition of these Epistles, by Rotermund, we see announced in 
the Leipsic Mass-Catalogue for Easter 1830 ; and have been disappointed 
in not obtaining it for this article. The editor, whom we know only as 



236 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

author of the Supplement to Joecher's Biographical Lexicon, professes, in 
the title, to give merely a reprint of the London edition of 1710, (*. e. a text 
of no authority, and swarming with typographical blunders.) a preface expla- 
natory of the origin of the satire, and biographical notices of the persons men- 
tioned in it. As there seems no attempt at a commentary, we do not surmise 
that Eotermund has performed more in Latin, [but in German it is,] than 
Muench in German ; and the small price shows that there can be little 
added to the text. — [Having now seen this edition, the presumptive opinion 
need not be withdrawn. — The only other attempt at an illustration of this 
satire of which I am aware, since this article was written, is that of Pro- 
fessor Eichstadt, who, in 1831 and the following years, on academical occa- 
sions, published at Jena his Commentationes De Poesi Culinaria, of which I 
possess four. They are explanatory of the persons alluded to in one of the 
Epistolae ; to wit, the Carmen Rithmicale Magistri Pliilippi Schlauraff, quod 
compilavit et comportavit, quando fuit Cursor in Theologia, et ambulavit per 
totam Almaniam superiorem. — Twenty years have now elapsed since the 
preceding article was written, and the Germans have not yet given to the 
world even a critical text of their great national satire. 

Eobanus Hessus, referred to in note f 5 P- 215, is I see an error for Crotus 
Rubianus. But the one letter of Eobanus in the Illustrium Virorum Epistolge 
ad Reuchlinum, (sig. Y. ii. sq.) is curious in itself ; and still more, as it is in 
answer to the following letter of Reuchlin, the autograph of which came into 
my possession several years after the date of the preceding article, and now 
appears for the first time. This autograph is a good specimen of the calli- 
graphy for which Keuchlin was noted ; and of which a fac-simile is to be 
found,, among others, in Effner's " Doctor Martin Luther," (ii. 205). This 
letter is of some historical importance. 

" Helio Eobaxo Hesso, 

politioris literature preceptor1 erdifordi.e, amico suo quam 
observandissimo. — ad manus. 

S. D. P. An tu non videas, Hesse, mecum simul, quam ista3 crudeles picie 
mendicae, istse Harpyise cyanoleucse, (non illi Fratres Arvales qui Romuli 
setate religiosi erant, sed hi Fratres Dominicales qui nostro revo a religione 
labascunt,) indefessa bella gerant, ut mihi vix concedatur spirare ac ali- 
quando vires resumere. Et tu moleste quereris, me tuis ad me datis Uteris 
in hoc tarn laborioso tempore nihil respondisse ! 

Tristius liaud illis monstrum, nee swvior idla 
Pestis. [Virg.] 

Quotidie calamum agitant meum, et mentem, pene defatigato mihi, alio im- 
pellunt, ut melioribus Uteris incumbere nequeam. Tu potes in Helicone 
choreas ducere, Ascrajoque calanio imitari Musarum voluptates. At mihi 
non est integrum inter tot crabrones consusurrare, aut quippiam, vol serium 
et rigidius Catone, meditari. Ergo nisi te amem, invidebo illi ture prospe- 
ritati, et mei miserebor : quod tu, princeps rei literariae nobilissimus, careas 
amiulis ; cum non modo tarn illustres generosi animi tui conatus, quos in 
Heroidibus ostentas, veriim etiam nomen ipsum tuum, tantse majestatis sig- 



UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF REUCHLTN. ' 237 

naculuin, ad invidiam multos concitare debuerat, (ut est nunc hominum mul- 
torum conditio, senescente mundo). Ephesiis enim Hessen, idem quod Rex 
Latinis, dicitur, Calliniacho poeta Cyrenaeo teste; qui Jovem, non sorte 
lectum esse Regem Deorum asserit, sed operibus manuum, in Hymno ad Jo- 
vem hoc utens carmine : — 

Ov as OeZv zooyvci [vulgO, iaa^voi\ Kcthai Qeaoiu, 'i^yoc Bs y^i^oiv. 
Ubi Hessena summum regem designat. [Chald. Hasin, potens.] Inter 
enim jetatis tuae Christianos poetas, ipse Rex es ; qui scribendis versibus, 
quodam potentatu et ingenii dominio eminentiore, plus ceteris metro im- 
peras, et syllabas quasque ad regulam regis. Gratulor itaque Universitati 
Erdifordiae, quod te tali clarescunt viro. Nee me in odium ejus, quominus 
de suo splendore ac laudis amplitudine gaudeam, unquam concitabunt qui- 
dam, male de me homines meriti, tecum habitantes ; qui tametsi Theologiam 
profitentur, tamenin condemnando mea, Dei vocem non suntsequuti, — Adam 
ubi es ? Ipsi autem illi inter pejores, non dico boni, sed minus mali fuerunt. 
Quanquam omnes, cum suis complicibus, qui non vident trabem in oculo 
suo, expectabunt Dei judicium dicentis : — In quo judicio judicaveritis, judi- 
cabimini; Nolite condemnare, et non condemnabimini. Certum hoc est : non 
mentitur Deus. Tu vero, quanquam omnium bellorum exitus incerti 
sunt, tamen de mea causa spem tibi concipe, quod has volucres prorsus su- 
perabo. Sententiam diffinitivam cum executione obtinui. Sed adversarii, 
victoriam meam putantes revera suam infamiam, omni diligentia invocave- 
runt Francorum Regem. Mirum, quod non [jam] Persarum summum item 
pontificem [atque] alios principes exorcisarunt, ut Sententiam Apostolicam 
labefactarent. Quapropter ego, licet victor, illos Romam citavi. Ut ab 
hoc exemplo discere potes ! Unde paulisper suspende chelyn, dum concla- 
matum fuerit. Interea tamen, si me amas, adapta citharam et Musis mate- 
riam colliga. — iEque foeliciter vale. 

E Stutgardia, vii Kal. Novembres, Anno m.d.xiiii. 

Joannes Reuchlin Phorcen. LL.D. 
In fervente ad Vindictam Iambo, non eris solus neque alter." 

Reuchlin's reference to the language of the Ephesians is explained by the 
Etymologicon Magnum (sub voce?) 

Eobanus, in his answer, says, inter alia, that he had shown this letter 
to sundry good men in Erfurt, admirers of Reuchlin, and enemies of the 
hostile faction, and to some even of the Theological Faculty, (who had con- 
demned the Eyeglass without interrogating its author.) " Sunt enim et hie 
quoque boni et mali ; ipsi autem illi, quos tu, non bonos sed inter pejores 
minus malos, appellas, poenitere videntur, quod Coloniensibus asinis et cir- 
cumforaneis nugigivendis ipsi decepti potius quam instructi, suffragium addi- 
derunt." 

Eobanus signalises " Hutten, Buschius, and Crotus" as the three first of 
the trumpeters of Reuchlin's victory.] 



II.-ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

IN REFERENCE TO CULLEN.* 



(July, 1832.; 



An Account of the Life, Lectures, and Writings of William, 
Cullen, M.D., Professor of the Practice of Physic in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. By John Thomson, M.D., Professor of 
Medicine and General Pathology in the University of Edinburgh. 
Vol. I. 8vo. Edinburgh : 1832. 

We are much gratified by the appearance of the present work. 
Cullen is one of those illustrious minds by whom Scotland, during 
the past century, was raised from comparative insignificance to 
the very highest rank in literature and science. In no depart- 
ment of intellectual activity has Scotland been more prolific of 
distinguished talent, than in medicine ; and as a medical philoso- 
pher the name of Cullen stands, in his native country, pre-emi- 
nent and alone. It would be difficult indeed to find in any nation 
an individual who displayed a rarer assemblage of the highest 
qualities of a physician. The characters of his genius were pro- 
minent, but in just accordance with each other. His erudition 
was extensive, yet it never shackled the independent vigour of 
his mind ; while, on the other hand, no love of originality made 
him overlook or disparage the labours of his predecessors. His 
capacity of speculation was strong, but counterbalanced by an 
equal power of observation ; his imagination, though lively, was 
broken in as a useful auxiliary to a still more energetic reason. 

* [This article, placed under the head of Literature, requires some indul- 
gence; I could not give it a class for itself, and it falls at least more natu- 
rally under this, than under either of the other heads.] 



CULLEN. 239 

The circumstances under which his mind was cultivated, were 
also conducive to its full and harmonious evolution. His educa- 
tion was left sufficiently to himself to determine his faculties to a 
free and vigorous energy ; sufficiently scholastic to prevent a 
one-sided and exclusive development. It was also favourable to 
the same result, that from an early period of life, his activity was 
divided between practice, study, and teaching ; and extended to 
almost every subject of medical science,— all however viewed in 
subordination to the great end of professional knowledge, the cure 
of disease. 

Cullen's mind was essentially philosophic. Without neglecting 
observation, in which he was singularly acute, he devoted him- 
self less to experiment than to arrangement and generalization. 
We are not aware, indeed, that he made the discovery of a single 
sensible phenomenon. Nor do we think less of him that he did 
not. Individual appearances are of interest only as they repre- 
sent a general law. In physical science the discovery of new 
facts is open to every blockhead with patience, manual dexterity, 
and acute senses ; it is less effectually promoted by genius than 
by co-operation, and more frequently the result of accident than 
of design. But what Cdlen did, it required individual ability to 
do. It required, in its highest intensity, the highest faculty of 
mind, — that of tracing the analogy of unconnected observations, 
of evolving from the multitude of particular facts a common 
principle, the detection of which might recall them from con- 
fusion to system, from incomprehensibility to science. Of ten 
thousand physicians familiar with the same appearances as Cul- 
len, is there one who could have turned these appearances to 
the same account ? But though not an experimentalist, Cullen's 
philosophy was strictly a philosophy of experience. The only 
speculation he recognised as legitimate was induction. To him 
theory was only the expression of an universal fact; and in 
rising to this fact, no one, with equal consciousness of power, 
was ever more cautious in the different steps of his generaliza- 
tion. 

Cullen's reputation, though high, has never been equal to his 
deserts. This is owing to a variety of causes. In medical 
science, a higher talent obtains perhaps a smaller recompense of 
popular applause than in any other department of knowledge. 
" Dat Galenus opes;" " the solid pudding," but not " the empty 
praise." Of all subjects of scientific interest, men in general 



240 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

seem to have the weakest curiosity in regard to the functions of 
their own minds, and even bodies. So is it now, and, however 
marvellous, so has it always been. " Eunt homines," says St 
Austin, " mirari alta montium, ingentes fluctus maris, altissimos 
lapsus fluminum, oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum; — seipsos 
relinquunt nee mirantur." For one amateur physiologist, we 
meet a hundred dilettanti chemists, and botanists, and mineralo- 
gists, and geologists. Even medical men themselves are, in general, 
equally careless and incompetent judges as the public at large, 
of all high accomplishment in their profession. Medicine they 
cultivate not as a science, but as a trade ; are indifferent to all 
that transcends the sphere of vulgar practice; and affect to 
despise what they are unable to appreciate. But independently 
of the general causes which have prevented Cullen from obtaining 
his due complement of fame, there are* particular causes which 
conspired also to the same result. His doctrine was not always 
fully developed in his works ; his opinions have been ignorantly 
misrepresented ; his originality invidiously impugned ; and what 
he taught in his lectures, published without acknowledgment by 
his pupils. 

Cullen's honour thus calling for vindication, was long aban- 
doned to neglect. This may be in part explained by the pecu- 
liar difficulty of the task. He who was competent to appreciate 
Cullen's merits, and to assert for him his proper place among 
medical reasoners, behoved to be at home in medicine, both 
as a practical art, and as a learned science, — he required at once 
experience, philosophy, and erudition. But this combination is 
now unfortunately rare : we could indeed with difficulty name a 
second individual so highly qualified for this duty as the accom- 
plished physician on whom it has actually devolved. The experi- 
ence of a long and extensive practice, — habits of thought trained 
in the best schools of philosophy, — an excursive learning which 
recalls the memory of a former age, — and withal an admiration of 
his subject, transmuting an arduous undertaking into a labour of 
love, — have enabled Dr Thomson, in his life of Cullen, to produce 
a work, which we have no hesitation in pronouncing the most im- 
portant contribution from a British author to the history of medi- 
cine, since the commencement of our labours. Cullen's personal 
biography is comparatively meagre. His life is in his doctrine. 
But to exhibit this doctrine, as influenced by previous, and as in- 
fluencing subsequent, speculation, was in a certain sort to exbibit 



CULLEN'S LIFE. 241 

the general progress of medical science. In the execution of this 
part of his labour, Dr Thomson presents an honourable exception 
to the common character of our recent historians of medicine. 
He is no retailer of second-hand opinions ; and his criticism of an 
author is uniformly the result of an original study of his works. 
Though the life of a physician, the interest of this biography is by 
no means merely professional. " The Philosopher," says Aris- 
totle, " should end with medicine, the Physician commence with 
philosophy." But philosophy and medicine have been always too 
much viewed independently of each other, and their mutual influ- 
ence has never been fairly taken into account in delineating the 
progress of either. The history of medicine is, in fact, a part, and 
a very important part, of the history of philosophy. Dr Thom- 
son has wholly avoided this defect ; and his general acquaintance 
with philosophical and medical opinions, renders the Life of Cul- 
len a work of almost equal interest to liberal enquirers, and to the 
well educated practitioner. 

William Cullen was born at Hamilton, in the year 1710. By 
lus father, a writer (Anglice, attorney) by profession, and factor 
to the Duke of Hamilton, he was sprung from a respectable line 
of ancestors, who had for several generations been proprietors of 
Saughs, a small estate in the parish of Bothwell; through his 
mother, he was descended from one of the most ancient families 
in the county of Lanark, the Robertons of Ernock. Having com- 
pleted his course of general education in the grammar school of 
his native town, and in the University of Glasgow, he was appren- 
ticed to Mr John Paisley, a surgeon of extensive practice in that 
city. At this period, (that of Edinburgh recently excepted,) the 
Scottish Universities did not afford the means of medical instruc- 
tion ; and such an apprenticeship was then the usual and almost 
the only way in which the student of medicine could, in Scotland, 
acquire a knowledge of his profession. Having exhausted the 
opportunities of improvement which Glasgow supplied, Cullen, 
with the view of obtaining a professional appointment, went, in his 
twentieth year, to London. Through the interest of Commissioner 
Cleland, (Will Honeycomb of the Spectator,) probably his kins- 
man, he was appointed surgeon to a merchant vessel trading to 
the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, commanded by Cap- 
tain Cleland of Auchinlee, a relation of his own. In this voyage 
he remained for six months at Port Bello ; thus enjoying an oppor- 
tunity of studying the effects of a tropical climate on the constitu- 

Q 



242 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

tion, and the endemic character of West Indian diseases. On his 
return to London, with the view of perfecting his knowledge of 
drugs, he attended for some time in the shop of Mr Murray, an 
eminent apothecary in the city. Two years (1732 — 1734) he 
spent in the family of Captain Cleland, at Auchinlee, in the parish 
of Shotts, wholly occupied in the study, and occasional practice, of 
his profession ; and after a season devoted to the study of general 
literature and philosophy, under a dissenting clergyman of Roth- 
bury in Northumberland, he completed Ins public education by 
attending for two sessions (1734-5, 1735-6) the medical classes 
in the University of Edinburgh. 

"The foundation," says his biographer, "of a new and extended medical 
school had been laid a few years before this time in Edinburgh, by the ap- 
pointment of Dr Monro to the Chair of Anatomy in the University, and by 
the judicious arrangements which that excellent anatomist and experienced 
surgeon afterwards made with Drs Rutherford, Sinclair, Innes and Plummer, 
for the regular and stated delivery of lectures on the diiferent branches of 
medicine. Previously to this arrangement, almost the only regular lectures 
given upon any subjects connected with medicine in Edinburgh, ^vere those 
which had been delivered in the Hall of the College of Surgeons, the chief 
medical school in that city, from the first institution of the College, in the 
year 1505, till the transference of the anatomical class into the University in 
1725. 

"Though scarcely ten years had elapsed from the first establishment of a 
regular school of medicine, in the University of Edinburgh when Dr Cullen 
became a student there, the reputation of that school was beginning to be 
every where acknowledged, and had already attracted to it, not only a great 
portion of those who were preparing themselves for the profession of medi- 
cine in the British dominions, but many students from foreign universities." 
—P. 8. 

At the age of twenty-six, Cullen commenced practice in his 
native town, and with the most nattering success. His dislike to 
surgery soon induced him to devolve that department of business 
upon a partner ; and for the last four years of his residence at 
Hamilton (having graduated at Glasgow), he practised only as a 
physician. Here he married Anna, daughter of the Reverend 
Mr Johnstone, minister of Kilbarchan ; who brought him a large 
family, and formed the happiness of his domestic life for forty-six 
years. Here also he became the friend and medical preceptor of 
the late celebrated Dr William Hunter. Hunter had been edu- 
cated for the church ; but an intercourse with Cullen determined 
him to a change of profession. After residing for a time in family 
with his friend, it was agreed that he should go and prosecute his 
studies in Edinburgh and London, with the intention of ultimately 



CULLEN'S LIFE AND MEDICAL MERITS. 243 

settling at Hamilton as Cullen's partner. This design was not, 
however, realized. Other prospects opened on the young anato- 
mist while in London, and Cullen cordially concurred in an alte- 
ration of plan, which finally raised his pupil to a professional 
celebrity, different certainly, but not inferior to his own. Though 
thus cast at a distance from each other in after life, the friend- 
ship of these distinguished men continued to the last warm and 
uninterrupted. 

Cullen, who, during his seven years' residence at Hamilton, 
had been sedulously qualifying himself for a higher sphere of 
activity, now removed to Glasgow. In the University of that 
city, with the exception of Anatomy, no lectures seem to have 
been previously delivered in any department of medicine. On his 
establishment in Glasgow, Cullen immediately commenced lecturer ; 
and, by the concurrence of the medical professors, he was soon 
permitted to deliver, in the University, courses of the Theory 
and Practice of Physic, of Materia Medica, of Botany, and of 
Chemistry. In his lectures on medicine, we find him maintaining 
in 1746, the same doctrines with regard to the theory of Fever 
the Humoral Pathology, and the Nervous System, which he pub- 
lished in his writings thirty years thereafter.* 

" In entering upon the duties of a teacher of medicine, Dr Cullen ventured 
to make another change in the established mode of instruction, by laying 
aside the use of the Latin language in the composition and delivery of his 
lectures. This was considered by many as a rash innovation ; and some, 
desirous to detract from his reputation, or not sufficiently aware of the ad- 
vantages attending this deviation from established practice, have insinuated 
that it was owing to Dr Cullen's imperfect knowledge of the Latin that he 
was induced to employ the English language. But how entirely groundless 
such an insinuation is, must be apparent to every one at all acquainted with 
his early education, course of studies, and habits of persevering industry. 
When we reflect, too, that it was through the medium of the Latin tongue 
that he must have acquired his extensive knowledge of medical science, it 
seems absurd to suppose that he was not qualified, like the other teachers of 
his time, to deliver, had he chosen it, his lectures in that language. We are 
not left, however, to conjecture with regard to this point ; for that Dr Cullen 

* Cullen, we see, is represented by French medical historians as " having 
taken Barthez for his guide." (Boisseau, in Diet, des Sc. Med. — Biogr. t. in. 
p. 363.) A chronological absurdity. Barthez was twenty-four years 
younger than Cullen ; the latter had, in his lectures, taught his peculiar doc- 
trines twenty-eight years before " his guide" was yet known to the world ; 
and Cullen's Institutions of Medicine preceded the Nova Doctrina de Functioni- 
bus of Barthez by two, the Nouveaux EUmens de la Science de VHomme by 
six years. 



24 i ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

had been accustomed, from an early period of his life, to compose in Latin, 
appears not only from letters written by him in that language to some of his 
familiar friends, first draughts of which have been preserved, but also from 
the fact, that, whilst he taught medicine at Glasgow in his vernacular tongue, 
he delivered, during the same period, several courses of lectures on Botany 
in the Latin language. The notes of these lectures still remain among his 
papers ; and I find also, written with his own hand, in the same language, 
two copies of an unfinished text-book on Chemistry. The numerous correc- 
tions of expression which are observable in the first sketches of Dr Cullen's 
Latin, as well as of his English compositions, show a constant attention on 
his part to the accuracy and purity of the language in which his ideas were 
expressed, and a mind always aiming, in whatever it engaged, at a degree 
of perfection higher than that which it conceived it had already attained." 
—P. 28. 

An interesting account of these various courses, is given by Dr 
Thomson. In particular, justice is done to Cullen's extensive 
and original views in chemistry ; and a curious history is afforded 
of the progress of chemical lectures, both in this country and on 
the continent. In this science, Cullen, while lecturer in Glasgow, 
had the merit of training a pupil destined to advance it farther 
than himself; though, as Dr Thomson has shown, the germs of 
Black's theory of latent heat are to be found in the lectures of his 
preceptor. Cullen's fame rests, however, on another basis. 

Cullen was thus the principal founder of the medical school of 
Glasgow, even before he was regularly attached to the University. 
In 1751, he was, however, admitted Professor of the Theory and 
Practice of Phj-sic, and this a few days before the translation of 
Dr Adam Smith from the Chair of Logic to that of Moral Philo- 
sophy. On this occasion, Hume and Burke were unsuccessful 
candidates for the professorship vacated by Smith. With Smith 
and Hume, whose minds in many respects bore a strong analogy 
to his own, Cullen maintained a familiar intercourse during life ; 
and their letters, now for the first time printed, form no unattrac- 
tive portion of the present volume. A mutual interest in the ap- 
plication of chemistry to the arts, afforded also, about the same 
period, the first occasion of a correspondence between Cullen and 
Lord Karnes, which soon ripened into an enduring friendship. 
The strength of his attachments is one of the most interesting 
features of Cullen's character. He seems never to have relinquish- 
ed, never to have lost a friend ; and the paternal interest he mani- 
fested in his pupils, secured to him their warmest affections in 
return. 

Cullen had for some years contemplated a removal to Edinburgh, 



CULLEN'S LIFE AND MEDICAL MERITS. 245 

before he accomplished his intention. At length, in 1755, on the 
decline of Dr Plummer's health, he was conjoined with that gentle- 
man in the Chair of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh, 
notwithstanding considerable opposition on the part of the other 
medical professors. During the ten years he retained this pro- 
fessorship, the number of his auditors continued steadily to 
increase ; from under twenty, they rose to near a hundred and 
fifty. A translation of Van Swieten's Commentaries, which Cul- 
len undertook at this juncture, was, like an earlier project of an 
edition of Sydenham's works, abandoned, in consequence of the 
extensive practice which he soon obtained. Nothing contributed 
more to the increase of his reputation than the clinical lectures 
which he now regularly delivered. In reference to these, his bio- 
grapher has furnished us with. an interesting sketch of the rise 
and progress of clinical instruction in general. In 1760, during 
a vacancy in the Chair of Materia Medica, he delivered also, with 
great applause, a course of lectures on that subject ; the notes of 
which, after being rapidly multiplied in manuscript for several 
years, were at length surreptitiously published in London. 

The celebrity which Cullen had acquired as a teacher of medi- 
cal practice, by his clinical lectures, and his course on the materia 
medica, had gained him not only great professional employment 
in Edinburgh, but numerous consultations from all parts of Scot- 
land. He was now indeed generally regarded as the appropriate 
successor of Dr Rutherford, in the Chair of Practical Medicine. 
Dr Rutherford had, however, imbibed prejudices against Cullen, 
which disposed him to resign in favour of Dr John Gregory of 
xVberdeen, a physician qualified in many respects to do high 
honour to the University, though Cullen's pretensions to the chair 
in question must be viewed as paramount to those of every other 
candidate. Cullen was unsuccessful ; and so disgusted was he with 
his treatment on this occasion, that, on the death of Dr Whytt, in 
the following year (1766), he only consented to accept the Chair 
of the Theory of Physic, at the solicitation of his friends, and in 
order to leave a vacancy in that of Chemistry for Dr Black. So 
strong, however, was the general conviction of Cullen's pre-emi- 
nent qualifications as a teacher of the practice of medicine, that 
the desire was ardently and publicly expressed by students and 
professors, that he should be permitted to lecture on that subject. 
With this desire Dr Gregory liberally complied. Accordingly, 
from the year 1768, the two professors continued to give alternate 



246 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

courses of the theory and practice of physic ; and on the death 
of Gregory in 1773, Cullen was appointed sole professor of the 
practice. " Such were the difficulties to be overcome, and such 
the exertions required to procure, first a place in the University 
of Edinburgh, and afterwards the proper situation in it, for the 
man whose genius, talents, and industry, shed such a lustre over 
the institution, and contributed in so remarkable a degree to ex- 
tend and to perpetuate the fame of its Medical School ! " With 
this period of Cullen's life, the present volume of his biography 
terminates. 

To form an estimate of what Cullen effected in the improvement 
of Medical Science, it is necessary to premise a few remarks in 
regard to what it behoved him to accomplish. 

If we take a general survey of medical opinions, we shall find 
that they are all either subordinate to, or coincident with, two 
grand theories. The one of these considers the solid constituents 
of the animal economy as the elementary vehicle of life, and con- 
sequently places in them the primary seat of disease. The other, 
on the contrary, sees in the humours the original realization oi 
vitality ; and these, as they determine the existence and quality 
of the secondary parts, or solids, contain, therefore, within them- 
selves, the ultimate principle of the morbid affection. By relation 
to these theories, the history of medicine is divided into three great 
periods. During the first, the two theories, still crude, are not 
yet disentangled from each other ; this period extends from the 
origin of medicine to the time of Galen. The second comprehends 
the reign of the Humoral Pathology — the interval between Galen 
and Frederic Hoffmann. In the last, the doctrine of the Living 
Solid is predominant ; from Hoffmann it reaches to the present 
day. 

In the medical doctrines of the first period, the two theories 
may be found partially developed. Sometimes Humorism, some- 
times Solidism, seems to be favoured ; neither, however, is ever 
generalized to the exclusion of the other ; and the partisans of 
each may with almost equal facility adduce authorities from the 
schools of Cos and Gnidos, of Athens and Alexandria, in support 
of their favourite opinion. 

By Galen, Humorism was first formally expounded, and reduced 
to a regular code of doctrine. Four elementary fluids, their rela- 
tions and changes, sufficed to explain the varieties of natural tem- 
perament, and the causes of disease : while the genius, eloquence. 



GALENISM=HUMORISM. 247 

and unbounded learning with which he illustrated this theory, 
mainly bestowed on it the ascendency, which, without essential 
alteration, it retained from the conclusion of the second to the 
beginning of the eighteenth century. Galenism and Humorism 
are, in fact, convertible expressions. Not that this hypothesis 
during that long interval encountered no opposition. It met, 
certainly, with some partial contradiction among the Greek and 
Arabian physicians. After the restoration of learning, Fer- 
nelius and Brissot, Argenterius and Joubert, attacked it in dif- 
ferent ways, and with different degrees of animosity ; and while 
Humorism extended its influence by an amalgamation with the 
principles of the Chemiatric school, Solidism found favour with 
some of the Mathematical physicians, among whom Baglivi is 
deserving of especial mention. Until the epoch we have stated, 
the prevalence of the Humoral Pathology was, however, all but 
universal. 

Nor was this doctrine merely an erroneous speculation; it 
exerted the most decisive, the most pernicious influence on prac- 
tice. — The various diseased affections were denominated in accom- 
modation to the theory. In place of saying that a malady 
affected the liver, the peritonaeum, or the organs of circulation, 
its seat was assumed in the blood, the bile, or the lymph. The 
morbific causes acted exclusively on the fluids ; the food digested 
in the stomach, and converted into chyle, determined the quali- 
ties of the blood; and poisons operated through the corruption 
they thus effected in the vital humours. All symptoms were 
interpreted in blind subservience to the hypothesis ; and those 
only attracted attention which the hypothesis seemed calculated 
to explain. The colour and consistence of the blood, mucus, 
feces, urine, and pus, were carefully studied. On the other 
hand, the phaenomena of the solids, if not wholly overlooked, as 
mere accidents, were slumped together under some collective 
name, and attached to the theory through a subsidiary hypothe- 
sis. By supposed changes in the humours, they explained the 
association and consecution of symptoms. Under the terms, 
crudity, coction, and evacuation, were designated the three prin- 
cipal periods of diseases, as dependent on an alteration of the 
morbific matter. In the first, this matter, in all its deleterious 
energy, had not yet undergone any change on the part of the 
organs; it was still crude. In the second, nature gradually 
resumed the ascendent : coction took place. In the third, the 



248 *0N THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

peccant matter, now rendered mobile, was evacuated by urine, 
perspiration, dejection, &c, and sequilibrium restored. When no 
critical discharge was apparent, the morbific matter, it was sup- 
posed, had, after a suitable elaboration, been assimilated to the 
humours, and its deleterious character neutralized. Coction 
might be perfect or imperfect; and the transformation of one 
disease into another was lightly solved by the transport or emi- 
gration of the noxious humour. It was principally on the changes 
of the evacuated fluids that they founded their judgments respect- 
ing the nature, issue, and duration of diseases. The urine, in 
particular, supplied them with indications, to which they attached 
the greatest importance. Examinations of the dead body con- 
firmed them in their notions. In the redness and tumefaction of 
inflamed parts, they beheld only a congestion of blood ; and in 
dropsies, merely the dissolution of that fluid ; tubercles were 
simply coagula of lymph ; and other organic alterations, in gene- 
ral, nought but obstructions from an increased viscosity of the 
humours. The plan of cure was in unison with the rest of the 
hypothesis. Venesection was copiously employed to renew the 
blood, to attenuate its consistency, or to remove a part of the 
morbific matter with which it was impregnated; and cathartics, 
sudorifics, diuretics, were largely administered, with a similar 
intent. In a word, as plethora or cacochymia were the two 
great causes of disease, their whole therapeutic was directed to 
change the quantity or quality of the fluids. Nor was tins mur- 
derous treatment limited to the actual period of disease. Seven 
or eight annual bloodings, and as many purgations — such was 
the common regimen the theory prescribed to ensure continuance 
of health ; and the twofold depletion, still customary, at spring 
and fall, among the peasantry of many European countries, is a 
remnant of the once universal practice. In Spain, every village 
has even now its Sangrador, whose only cast of surgery is blood- 
letting ; and he is rarely idle. The medical treatment of Lewis 
XIII. may be quoted as a specimen of the humoral therapeutic. 
Within a single year this theory inflicted on that unfortunate 
monarch above a hundred cathartics, and more than forty blood- 
ings. — During the fifteen centuries of Humorism, how many mil- 
lions of lives did medicine cost mankind ? 

The establishment of a system founded on the corrector 
doctrine of Solidism, and purified from the crudities of the 
Iatro-mathematical and Iatro-chemical hypotheses, was reserved 



SOLIDISM.— STAHL, HOFFMANN, BOERHAAVE. 249 

for three celebrated physicians towards the commencement of the 
eighteenth century, — Frederic Hoffmann, — George Ernest 
Stahl, — and Hermann Boerhaave. The first and second of 
this triumvirate were born in the same year, were both pupils of 
Wedelius of Jena, and both professors, and rival professors, in the 
University of Halle ; the third was eight years younger than his 
contemporaries, and long an ornament of the University of Ley- 
den. The doctrines of these masters were in many respects 
widely different, and contributed in very different degrees to the 
subversion of the obnoxious hypotheses. This was more effec- 
tually accomplished by the two Germans, especially by Hoffmann ; 
whereas many prejudices of the humoral pathology, of the mecha- 
nical and chemical theories, remained embalmed in the eclecticism 
of Boerhaave. 

In estimating Cullen's merits as a medical philosopher, Dr 
Thomson was necessarily led to take a survey of the state of 
medical opinion, at the epoch when Cullen commenced his specu- 
lations : — 

" At the period when Dr Cullen first began to deliver lectures on medicine 
in Glasgow, there prevailed in the medical schools of Europe three great sys- 
tems of physic, those of Stahl, Hoffmann, and Boerhaave, — teachers not less 
distinguished by their peculiar and original powers of intellect, than by their 
attainments in literature and philosophy, their proficiency in the mathema- 
tical and experimental sciences, and their extensive knowledge of theoretical 
and of practical medicine. The lectures and writings of these eminent men, 
besides affording useful summaries of all that was known in medicine before 
the beginning of the eighteenth century, laid open various new and interest- 
ing views of the animal economy. Stahl and Hoffmann, in particular, recog- 
nised more distinctly, and recommended more emphatically, than had been 
done by any of their predecessors, the study of the living powers, and the 
laws by which they are governed, as the proper and legitimate objects of 
medical investigation. 

" The ancient doctrines of the four elements and their corresponding tem- 
peraments — of the separate functions of the vegetative, sentient, and ra- 
tional souls — and of the agency of the natural, vital, and animal spirits — 
had continued to be taught in the schools of medicine with very little varia- 
tion, from the time of Galen till after the middle of the seventeenth century. 
It was, indeed, but a short time before Stahl, Hoffmann, and Boerhaave, 
began to lecture on medicine, that a soM foundation had been laid for the 
extension and improvement of medical science, by the introduction of the 
experimental and inductive method of prosecuting philosophical inquiries, so 
well explained and strenuously inculcated in the writings of Lord Bacon, — 
by the clear, precise, and logical distinction made by Descartes between 
mind and matter, as the respective subjects of properties essentially different 
from each other, — by the accurate analysis which had been given by Locko 



250 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE 

of mind and its operations, in his Essay on the Human Understanding, and 
his recognition of sensation and reflection as distinct sources of knowledge, 
— by the discovery by Newton of the universal law by which the motions of 
masses of matter placed at sensible distances from one another are regulated, 
and his distinction of this class of motions froni the chemical changes which 
the different species of matter produce upon one another when their minute 
particles are brought into immediate contact, — by the application (though at 
first necessarily imperfect, and in many respects erroneous) of the principles 
of natural philosophy and of chemistry to the investigation of the phenomena 
of the animal economy, — by the discovery of the circulation of the blood by 
Harvey, and of the ^absorbent system by Asellius and Pecquet, — by the 
minute examination of the structure, distribution, and functions of the ner- 
vous system by Willis, Vieussens, Baglivi, and others, — and by the develop- 
ment by Glisson of the contractile or irritable power inherent in muscular 
fibres, by the operation of which the various motions of the animal economy 
are performed ; — advances in knowledge all tending to facilitate the proper 
investigation of the vital susceptibilities and energies inherent in organised 
bodies, and of the operation of the external agents by which these suscepti- 
bilities and energies may be excited, modified, or destroyed." (Pp. 162-3.) 

Stahl, — Hoffmann, — Boerhaave, are then passed in review ; 
their doctrines displayed in themselves, and in relation to other 
systems ; and subjected to an enlightened criticism. This analysis 
exhibits a rare command of medical and philosophical literature, 
strong powers of original speculation, and the caution of an expe- 
rienced practitioner. 

In discussing the Animism of Stahl, Dr Thomson takes a view 
of the various divisions of the soul and its faculties, adopted by 
the different schools of philosophy and medicine, from Hippo- 
crates to Blumenbach; and shows that the Stahlian theory, in 
rejecting the animal spirits of Galen and Descartes, with all 
mechanical and chemical explanations of the vital functions, and 
in attributing to the same soul the collective phenomena of life, 
from the purest energies of intelligence to the lowest movement 
of the animal organism, has more of apparent than of real novelty. 
It was the universal opinion of the ancient philosophers, that 
body was incapable of originating motion, and that self-activity 
was the essential attribute of an incorporeal principle or soul. 
But while thus at one in regard to the general condition of acti- 
vity, (Aristotle's criticism of the otinroxfoirrou of Plato is only verbal,) 
they differed widely as to this, — whether different kinds of energy, 
change, movement, were determined by the same, or by different 
souls. Plato's psychological trinity is clear; but whether Aristotle, 
by his Vegetable, Animal, and Rational Souls, supposes three con- 



STAHL. 251 

centric potences of the same principle, or three distinct principles, 
is not unambiguously stated by himself, and has been always a 
point mooted among his disciples. Stahl' s doctrine is thus virtually 
identical with the opinion of that great body of Aristotelians, who, 
admitting the generic difference of function between the three 
souls, still maintain their hypostatic unity. In this doctrine, the 
vegetable, animal, and rational souls express only three of several 
relations of the same simple substance. We are not convinced, 
with Dr Thomson, that any thing is gained by limiting the term 
^vyh, or Soul, to the conscious mind. Many modern philosophers 
(as Leibnitz and, after Leibnitz, Kant,) do not, even in the cogni- 
tive faculties, restrict our mental activity to the sphere of consci- 
ousness, and this too for sufficient reasons ; the phenomena of 
nutrition, growth, generation, &c, are as little explicable on 
merely chemical and mechanical principles, as those of sense, or 
even those of intelligence, and all seem equally dependent on cer- 
tain conditions of the nervous system ; the assumption of a double 
or triple principle is always hypothetical, and Entia non sunt 
multiplicanda prceter necessitatem ; while, at the same time, on 
any supposition, a generic expression is convenient, to denote the 
cause or causes of life in its lowest and in its highest gradations. 
We are unable, therefore, to coincide with Dr Thomson in his 
praise of Galen, for originating this innovation ; more especially 
as it is sufficiently apparent, (however reserved his language may 
occasionally be), that in Galen's own theory of mind, the highest 
operations of intellect, and the lowest function of his unconscious 
Nature, are viewed as equally the reflex, and nothing but the re- 
flex of organization. With this qualification, we fully coincide in 
the following estimate of Stahl : — 

" The simple and sublime conception, that all the motions of the human 
body are produced and governed by an intelligent principle inherent in it, 
was well calculated, by its novelty and by the easy and comprehensive ge- 
neralization of vital phenomena which it seemed to afford, to excite and pro- 
mote the speculative enquiries of medical philosophers, and to free the science 
of medicine from many of those erroneous and absurd mechanical and chemi- 
cal doctrines with which in its progress it had become encumbered. But the 
adoption of this hypothesis led Stahl, in the framing of his system, to be too 
easily satisfied with the imperfect and erroneous physiological view which 
he had taken of the human economy,— to neglect the phenomena of life, as 
they present themselves in the nutrition and generation of plants and of irra- 
tional animals, — to content himself in accounting for the phenomena of the 
organic functions, with applying the term Rational Soul to the principle 
which had been, by almost all former physiologists, denominated the vegeta- 



252 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDIC [NE. 

tive soul of nature ; and almost wholly to omit in his view of the animal 
economy, the consideration of the peculiar and distinguishing susceptibilities 
and energies of the Nervous system. These errors and omissions prevented 
Stahl from perceiving the fixed boundary which has been established by na- 
ture between the operations of the material and mental faculties of our frame, 
in that consciousness of unity and personal identity, by which all the various 
modifications of sense, memory, intellect, and passion, appear to be con- 
stantly and inseparably accompanied ; while, at the same time, his ambition 
to be the founder of a new sect in medicine, disposed him to be less just to 
the merits of his predecessors and contemporaries than is required of one who 
undertakes to make any addition to the opinions or to the experience of past 



" It is but just to Stahl, however, to acknowledge, that he had the merit 
of directing the attention of medical practitioners, in a more particular man- 
ner than had been done before his time, to that resistance to putrefaction 
which exists in the solid and fluid parts of the body during life, — to the vital 
activities by which the state of health is preserved, and its functions duly 
performed, — to the influence which the mind indirectly exercises over the 
different functions of the body — to the effects of the different passions in ex- 
citing diseases, — to the natural course of diseases, — and especially to those 
powers of the animal economy by which diseases are spontaneously cured or 
relieved."— (Pp. 180, 181). 

Medico, qua medicus, ignota est anima. Stahl may be re- 
proached, that his medical theory was purely psychological, and 
that he suffered it to exert too dominant an influence on his prac- 
tice. Confiding in the inherent wisdom of the vital principle, his 
medicine was, as he professed it to be, the " Art of curing by ex- 
pectation." Cullen's censure of Stahl's practice, as " proposing 
only inert and frivolous remedies," appears, however, to Dr 
Thomson too indiscriminating ; "it being," as he well observes, " a 
matter of extreme difficulty to say at what point a cautious and 
prudent abstinence from interference passes into ignorant and 
careless negligence." * 

* [Dr Thomson might, indeed, have stated this more strongly, and the 
statement would have been borne out, not by Stahl only, but by Hoffmann. 
In Hoffmann's dissertation On the seven rules of good health, the last and 
most important of these is : — " Fly Doctors and doctors' Drugs, as you 
wish to be well ; (Fuge Medicos et Medicamenta, si vis esse salvus" ) : and 
this precept of that great physician is inculcated by the most successful 
practitioners (or uon-practitioners) of ancient and of modern times. Celsus 
well expresses it : — " Optima medicina est non uti medicina ; " and I have 
heard a most eminent physician candidly confess, " that the best practice 
was that which did nothing ; the next best, that which did little.'' Iu truth, 
medicine in the hands by which it is vulgarly dispensed, is a curse to human 
ity, rather than a blessing ; and the mom intelligent authorities of the pro- 



HOFFMANN. 253 

Dr Thomson's account of Hoffmann's system is, however, still 
more interesting ; this physician being the great founder of the 
now dominant pathology of the Living Solid, — Solidism, a doc- 
trine which it was Cullen's glory to adopt, to vindicate, and to 
complete. — However apparently opposed to that of his rival, the 
theory of Hoffmann was, equally with that of Stahl, established 
on the Aristotelic psychology ; although less dependent in prac- 
tice on any peculiar hypothesis of mind, and more influenced 
by the mathematical and chemical crotchets of the time, and the 
Cartesian and Leibnitian theories. The Peripatetic doctrine, 
as interpreted by Philoponus, Aquinas, Scotus, &c, of the 
substantial difference of the Vegetable, Sensitive, and Rational 
Souls, corresponds exactly to Hoffmann's Nature or Organic 
Body, — his Sentient Soul, — and his Rational Soul ; agents, ac- 
cording to him, differing in essence as in operation. The merits 
of this great improver of medicine, whose works are now so cul- 
pably neglected, are canvassed by Dr Thomson with equal learn- 
ing and discrimination. We can only afford to quote the following 
observations : — ■ 

" The great and prominent merits of Hoffmann as a medical philosopher, 
undoubtedly consisted in his having perceived and pointed out more clearly 
than any of his predecessors, the extensive and powerful influence of the 
Nervous System, in modifying and regulating at least, if not in producing, 
all the phenomena of the organic as well as of the animal functions in the 
human economy, and more particularly in his application of this doctrine to 
the explanation of diseases. Galen had recorded may facts which had been 
observed before his time, by Erasistratus, Herophilus, and others, relative 
to the nervous system, considered as the organ of sense and voluntary mo- 
tion, and to these he had added several new observations and experiments 

fession — " ixr^oju oi x^tara.'rctroi' 1 ' 1 — from Hippocrates downwards, agree 
that, on an average, their science, at least its practice, is a nuisance, and 
" send physic to the dogs." The Solidists, indeed, promptly admit, that the 
Humorists were homicides by wholesale for above fifteen centuries ; while 
Horn cepathy and the Water-cure are recoils against the murderous polyphar- 
macy of the Solidists themselves. Priesnitz, I see, declares, that the most 
and the worst afflictions which " flesh is" not "heir to," but which water has 
to remedy, are " the doctor and the drugs." This is consolatory to the world 
at large ; for if, as Charron says, " we must all live and die on trust," so we 
must all live and die, secundum artem, on one medical system or another. 
The utmost we can do is, like Ajax, to die with our eyes open ; for — 
" Non nobis inter vos tantas componere lites ; " 
" Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" 
Has the practice of medicine made a single step since Hippocrates? ] 



254 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

of his own. But it was not till tlie publication of the elaborate works of 
Willis and Vieussens, that the structure, distribution, and functions of that 
system seem to have become the objects of veiy general attention among 
medical men. These authors pointed out many examples of sympathies 
existing between different parts of the human body through the medium of 
the nervous system, in the states both of health and disease ; and Mayow, 
Baglivi, and Pacchioni, endeavoured to account for some of these sympa- 
thetic actions, by a contractile power which they erroneously supposed to be 
lodged in the fibres of the dura matter. It was reserved for Hoffmann, 
nowever, to take a comprehensive view of the Nervous System, not only as 
the organ of sense and motion, but also as the common centre by which all 
the different parts of the animal economy are connected together, and 
through which they mutually influence each other. He was, accordingly, 
led to regard all those alterations in the structure and functions of this eco- 
nomy, which constitute the state of disease, as having their primary origin 
in affections of the nervous system, and as depending, therefore, upon a de- 
ranged state of the imperceptible and contractile motions in the solids, rather 
than upon changes induced in the chemical composition of the fluid parts of 
the body." (Pp. 195, 196). 

Boerhaave's motto, — Simplex Veri sigillum, — stands in glaring 
contrast with his system. In practice he was a genuine follower 
of Hippocrates and nature ; in theory at once Peripatetic, and 
Cartesian, and Leibnitian, Iatro-chemist and Mechanician, Humo- 
rist and Solidist, his system presents only a plausible conciliation 
of all conflicting hypotheses. The eclecticism of Boerhaave, 
destitute of real unity, had no principle of stability, and was 
especially defective in relation to the vital powers. It was ac- 
cordingly soon essentially modified by his disciples, and an 
approximation quietly effected to the simpler but more compre- 
hensive principles of Hoffmann. De Gorter, Winter, Kaau 
Boerhaave, and Gaubius, all co-operated to this result ; but the 
pupil who hazarded the most important changes on the system 
of his master, and who, indeed, contributed perhaps more than 
any other individual to the improvement of medical science in 
general, was Haller. In the developement of his great doctrine 
of Irritability, Haller is, indeed, not the pupil of Boerhaave, but 
a follower of Hoffmann and Glisson. Dr Thomson's history of 
this doctrine is one of the most valuable portions of his work ; 
and his account of the celebrated controversy touching the prin- 
ciple of vital and involuntary motion between Whytt and Haller, 
will be found not more attractive to professional physicians, 
than to all who take any interest in the philosophy of animated 
nature. 

Having thus indicated Cullen's point of departure, Dr Thomson 



CULLEN. 255 

now guides us along the steps of his advance. Under the heads 
of Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics, a detailed account is 
given of Cullen's system, in its common and in its peculiar doc- 
trines. In this, the principal portion of the work, is exhibited, 
for the first time, (and chiefly from manuscript sources,) a com- 
prehensive view of Cullen's services to medical science; much 
original information is supplied ; new light is thrown upon points 
hitherto obscure ; many prevalent misconceptions are rectified ; 
and some unworthy, we are sorry to add, hitherto successful, 
plagiarisms are exposed. Cullen's reputation had suffered from 
misrepresentation, ignorance, and neglect ; but never was the 
honour of an author more triumphantly vindicated by his bio- 
grapher. We regret our inability to do any justice to this admi- 
rable survey ; which is, indeed, not more valuable as an appre- 
ciation of Cullen's merits, than as a supplement to the history 
of modern medicine. An outline of its contents would be of 
little interest or value ; and even an outline would exceed our 
limits. — — — 

To the history of Cullen's doctrines in relation to those of pre- 
vious theorists, Dr Thomson subjoins an account, — and the best 
we have ever seen, — of the contemporary progress of medicine in 
the schools of Montpellier and Paris. On this, however, we can- 
not touch. Our limits also preclude us from following him in his 
important discussion on medical education. We warmly recom- 
mend this part of the volume to those interested in the subject. 
A curious letter of Adam Smith (prior to the publication of his 
Wealth of Nations) on Universities and Degrees, will be admired 
for its ability by those who dissent from his well-known doctrine 
upon these points. We regret that we cannot make room for 
this very characteristic production, which is now for the first time 
given to the public. Its praise of the Scottish Universities, and 
its opinion as to Visitations, are particularly worthy of notice. 
The results of the late Royal Commission of Visitation will by 
some, perhaps, be viewed as affording a good commentary on Dr 
Smith's text. " In the present state of the Scotch Universities, 
I do most sincerely look upon them as, in spite of all their faults, 
without exception the best seminaries of learning that are to be 
found anywhere in Europe." [Smith would not say this now; 
and he said it then, probably, in utter ignorance of the Dutch 
and German Universities.] " They are, perhaps, upon the whole, 
as unexceptionable as any public institutions of that kind, which 



256. ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

all contain in their very nature the seeds and causes of negligence 
and corruption, have ever been, or are ever likely to be. That, 
however, they are still capable of amendment, and even of consi- 
derable amendment, I know very well ; and a Visitation is, I be- 
lieve, the only proper means of procuring them this amendment. 
But before any wise man would apply for the appointment of so 
arbitrary a tribunal, in order to improve what is already, upon 
the whole, very well, he ought certainly to know, with some de- 
gree of certainty, first, who are likely to be appointed visitors ; 
and, secondly, what plan of reformation those visitors are likely 
to follow." Besides the medical matters we have been able to 
notice, this volume contains various other topics of general inter- 
est. The letters alone which it supplies of distinguished indivi- 
duals form an important addition to the literary history of Scot- 
land during last century. David Hume, Adam Smith, Lord 
Karnes, Duhamel, William Hunter, Black, Senac, Fothergill, are 
among Cullen's most frequent correspondents. 

We look forward to the concluding volume with no little curio- 
sity. It will trace of course the influence of Cullen's specu- 
lations on the subsequent progress of medicine, and, we hope, 
continue (what Dr Thomson has already proved himself so well 
qualified to execute) the history of this science to the present 
day. 



EDUCATION. 



L-ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS, 

AS AN EXERCISE OF MIND.* 
(January, 1836.) 

Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as a part of a Liberal 
Education. By the Rev. William Whewell, M.A., Fellow 
and Tutor of Trinity College. 8vo. Cambridge : 1835. 

We saw the announcement of this pamphlet with no ordinary 
interest, — from the subject, — from the place of publication, — and 
from the author. 

The subject is one of great importance in the science of educa- 

* [In French by M. Peisse ; in Italian by S. Lo Gatto ; in German, as a 
separate pamphlet, under the title, — Ueber ben Werth und Unwerth der 
Mathematik, ah Mittel der hoehern geistigen Ausbildung, Cassel, 1836. To 
this last there is an able preface ; and the translator publishes the paper from 
" an intimate and resistless conviction that the plan of study in some of our 
new gymnasia comprehends too great a variety of objects, and, especially, 
lavishes too much time and application on mathematical instruction ; — an 
instruction without interest to the majority of students, which, at the same 
time, pays no regard to the differences of natural disposition and future des- 
tination, overloads the memory and compromises the development of the 
higher mental and moral capacities, while, more especially, it stunts the evo- 
lution of that free and independent activity of thought on which a utility for 
life and a susceptibility for its noblest avocations depend." 

This article was attacked in a pamphlet published by Professor Chevallier 
of Durham, in the course of the year ; but his opposition being either mere 
assertion or mere mistake, I do not find it necessary to say anything in reply. 
In fact, his defence of " The Study of Mathematics as conducive to the de- 
velopment of the Intellectual Powers," may suffice to show how little, even 

K 



258 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

tion. Whether, and to what extent, the study of mathematics 
conduces to the development of the higher faculties, is a question 
which, though never adequately discussed, has been very confi- 
dently and very variously decided. The stream of opinions, and 
the general practice of the European schools and universities, 
allow to that study, at best, only a subordinate utility as a mean 
of liberal education ; — that is, an education in which the individual 
is cultivated, not as an instrument towards some ulterior end, but 
as an end unto himself alone ; in other words, an education, in 
which his absolute perfection as a man, and not merely bis relative 
dexterity as a professional man, is the scope immediately in view. 
But, at the same time, it cannot be denied, that signs of a revolu- 
tionary tendency in popular opinion, touching the objects and the 
end of education, are, in this nation at least, becoming daily more 
and more obtrusive ; and as the extended study of mathematics 
is that mainly proposed, in lieu of the ancient branches of disci- 
pline which our innovators would retrench, a professed inquiry, 
like the present, into the influence of this study on the intellectual 
habits, comes invested, independently of its general importance, 
with a certain local and temporary interest. 

But the centre from which it proceeds, enhances also the inte- 
rest of the publication. In opposition to the general opinion of 
the learned world, — in opposition to the practice of all other uni- 
versities, past or present, — in opposition even to its oaths and 
statutes, and to the intention of its founders and legislators, the 
University of Cambridge stands alone in now making mathema- 
tical science the principal object of the whole liberal education it 
affords ; and mathematical skill the sole condition of the one 
tripos of its honours, and the necessary passport to the other : — 
thus restricting to the narrowest proficiency all places of distinc- 
tion and emolument in university and college, to which such 
honours constitute a claim ; — thus also leaving the immense majo- 
rity of its alumni without incitement, and the most arduous and 
important studies void of encouragement and reward. It is true, 

by an able advocate, can be alleged in vindication of their utility in this 
respect at all. 

Certain statements in the criticism have also been controverted by Profes- 
sor Boole in his very able " Mathematical Analysis of Logic," in 1847. I 
shall consider these in a note. (P. 273.) 

On Dr Whewell's rejoinder, see the end of the article. 

One unimportant note appended by the Editor is omitted.] 



WORK REVIEWED. 259 

indeed, that the effect of this contracted tendency of the public 
university is, in some degree, tempered by certain favourable acci- 
dents in the constitution of more than one of its private colleges ; 
but with every allowance for petty and precarious counteraction, 
and latterly for some very inadequate legislation, the University 
of Cambridge, unless it can demonstrate that mathematical study 
is the one best, if not the one exclusive, mean of a general evolu- 
tion of our faculties, must be held to have established and main- 
tained a scheme of discipline, more partial and inadequate than 
any other which the history of education records. That no Cam- 
bridge mathematician has yet been found to essay this demonstra- 
tion, so necessary for his university, so honourable to his science, 
has always appeared to us a virtual admission, that the thesis was 
incapable of defence. A treatise, therefore, apparently on the 
very point, and by a distinguished member of the university, 
could not fail of engaging our attention ; and this, whether it 
proposed to defend the actual practice of the seminary, or to urge 
the expediency of a reform. 

From the character of its author, the pamphlet before us like- 
wise comes recommended by no mean claim to consideration. Mr 
Whewell has already, by his writings, approved to the world, not 
only his extensive acquirements in mathematical and physical 
science, but his talent as a vigorous and independent thinker. To 
a narrower circle, he is known as the principal public tutor of the 
principal college of his university ; and in this relation, his zeal, 
and knowledge, and ability have concurred in raising him to an 
enviable eminence. Though more peculiarly distinguished by his 
publications in that department of science so exclusively patron- 
ised by the university, he has yet shown at once his intelligence 
and liberality, by amplifying the former circle of studies pursued 
in the college under his direction ; and, in particular, we are in- 
formed, that he has exerted his influence in awakening a new 
spirit for the cultivation of mental philosophy ; in which depart- 
ment he has already introduced, or is in the course of introducing, 
a series of more appropriate authors than those previously in use. 

In these circumstances it was with more than usual expectation 
that we received Mr WhewelPs pamphlet. Its perusal — must we 
say it? — has disappointed us. The confession is unavoidable. 
Even the respect which we entertain for the character and talents 
of the author, compels us to be plain rather than pleasant with 
his work. As a writer, Mr Whewell has long out-grown the need 



260 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

of any critical dandling : the question he agitates is far too serious 
to tolerate the bandying of compliments ; his authority, in oppo- 
sition to our conviction, is too imposing to allow of quarter to his 
reasoning ; whilst we are confident, that he is himself too sincere 
a champion of truth, to accept of any favour but what the inte- 
rest of truth demands. 

We say, that we are disappointed with the pamphlet, and this 
on sundry accounts. We are disappointed, certainly, that its 
author did not here advocate for the university the liberal views 
which he had already extended to his college. But taking it for 
a vindication of mathematical study, as the principal mean in the 
cultivation of the reasoning faculty, — supposing also that the rea- 
soning faculty is that whose cultivation is chiefly to be encouraged 
in the liberal education of a university, — considering it, in a word, 
from its own point of view alone, we say that we are disappointed 
with it, as failing signally in the accomplishment of what it pro- 
poses. In fact, had our opinion not previously been decided on 
the question, the perusal of this argument in defence of mathe- 
matical study, as a useful gymnastic of the mind, would have only 
tended to persuade us, that in this relation, it was comparatively 
useless. 

Before entering on details, it is proper here, once for all, to 
premise : — In the first place, that the question does not regard, 
the value of mathematical science, considered in itself, or in its 
objective residts, but the utility of mathematical study, that is, 
in its subjective effect, as an exercise of mind; and in the second, 
that the expediency is not disputed, of leaving mathematics, as a 
co-ordinate, to find their level among the other branches of aca- 
demical instruction. It is only contended, that they ought not 
to be made the principal, far less the exclusive, object of acade- 
mical encouragement. We speak not now of professional, but of 
liberal, education ; not of that, which considers the mind as an 
instrument for the improvement of science, but of this, which 
considers science as an instrument for the improvement of mind. 

Of all our intellectual pursuits, the study of the mathematical 
sciences is the one, whose utility as an intellectual exercise, when 
carried beyond a moderate extent, has been most peremptorily 
denied by the greatest number of the most competent judges; 
and the arguments, on which this opinion is established, have 
hitherto been evaded rather than opposed. Some intelligent 
mathematicians, indeed, admit all that has boon urged against 



QUESTION STATED— MR WHEWELL'S GROUND. 261 

their science, as a principal discipline of the mind ; and only con- 
tend that it ought not to be extruded from all place in a scheme 
of liberal education. With these, therefore, we have no contro- 
versy. More strenuous advocates of this study, again, maintain, 
that mathematics are of primary importance as a logical exercise 
of reason; but unable to controvert the evidence of its con- 
tracted and partial cultivation of the faculties, they endeavour to 
vindicate the study in general, by attributing its evil influence to 
some peculiar modification of the science ; and thus hope to avoid 
the loss of the whole, by the vicarious sacrifice of a part. But 
here unfortunately they are not at one. Some are willing to 
surrender the modern analysis as a gymnastic of the mind. They 
confess, that its very perfection as an instrument of discovery 
unfits it for an instrument of mental cultivation, its formulae 
mechanically transporting the student with closed eyes to the 
conclusion; whereas the ancient geometrical construction, they 
contend, leads him to the end, more circuitously, indeed, but by 
his own exertion, and with a clear consciousness of every step in 
the procedure. Others, on the contrary, disgusted with the 
tedious and complex operations of geometry, recommend the alge- 
braic process as that most favourable to the powers of generaliza- 
tion and reasoning ; for, concentrating into the narrowest com- 
pass the greatest complement of meaning, it obviates, they main- 
tain, all irrelevant distraction, and enables the intellect to operate 
for a longer continuance, more energetically, securely, and effec- 
tually. — The arguments in favour of the study, thus neutralize 
each other ; and the reasoning of those who deny it more than a 
subordinate and partial utility, stands not only uncontroverted, 
but untouched, — not only untouched, but admitted. 

Mr Whewell belongs to the class of thorough-going advocates ; 
he would maintain the paramount importance of mathematical 
study in general ; but willingly allows the worst that has been 
urged against it to be true of certain opinions and practices, to 
which he is opposed. The obnoxious modifications are not, how- 
ever, with him coincident either with the geometric, or with the 
analytic, method ; but though, we think, if fairly developed, his 
principles would tend to supersede the latter, — as he has applied 
them, they merely affect certain alleged abuses in both depart- 
ments of the science. 

We were disappointed in finding so little said on the general 
argument ; and the special reasoning we must be allowed to dis- 



262 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

regard, as we cannot recognise a suspected substance to be whole- 
some food, merely because certain bits of it are admitted to be 
deadly poison. 

But the general argument is not only brief but inconclusive. 
The usual generalities, the common vague assertions, we have, in 
praise of mathematics, and of the logical habits, which it is assumed, 
that they induce ; but Mr Whewell controverts none of the grounds, 
he refers to none of the authorities, which go to prove that the ten- 
dency of a too exclusive study of these sciences is, absolutely, to 
disqualify the mind for observation and common reasoning. We 
cannot now criticise its details, though to some we shall allude in 
the sequel ; but the very conception of the argument is vicious. 
Mr Whewell contrasts Mathematics and Logic, and endeavours 
to establish the high and general importance of the former, by 
showing their superiority to the latter as a school of practical 
reasoning. Now admitting, what we are far indeed from doing, 
that the merits of the two sciences are fully produced and fairly 
weighed against each other, still the comparison itself is invalid. 
Logic, by a famous distinction, is divided : — into Theoretical or 
General Logic {%a{ig ^^yfiarau, docens), in so far as it analyzes the 
mere laws of thought ; and into Practical or Special Logic (!> 
^*3ffg/, utens), in so far as it applies these laws to a certain matter 
or class of objects. The former is one, and stands in the same 
common relation to all the sciences ; the latter is manifold, and 
stands in proximate relation to this or that particular science, with 
which it is in fact identified. Now, as all matter is either necessary 
or contingent (a distinction which may be here roughly assumed 
to coincide with mathematical and non-mathematical), we have 
thus, besides one theoretical or general logic, also two practical or 
special logics in their highest universality and contrast. 
Theoretical Logic. 
1) Practical Logic, 2) Practical Logic, 

As specially applied to Neces- As specially applied to Con- 
sary Matter = Mathematical tingent Matter= Philosophy and 
reasoning. General reasoning.* 

Now, the question which Mr Whewell proposes to handle, is — 

* [The study of Language, if conducted upon rational principles, is one of 
the best exercises of an applied Logic. This study I cannot say that any of 
our universities encourage. To master, for example, the Minerva of Sane- 
this with its commentators is, I conceive, a far more profitable exercise of 
mind than to conquer the Principia of Newton. — But I anticipate.] 



MR WHEWELL'S GROUND UNTENABLE. 263 

What is the best instrument for educating men to a full develop- 
ment of the reasoning faculty ? and his answer to that question is 
— Mathematics. But the reasoning faculty of men, being in all 
principally, in most altogether, occupied upon contingent matter, 
comprising, what Mr Whewell himself calls, — " the most important 
employments of the human mind ; " he was bound articulately to 
prove, what certainly cannot be presumed, that Mathematics, (the 
Practical Logic of necessary matter,) cultivate the reasoning faculty 
for its employment on contingent matter, better than Philosophy, &c. 
— the Practical Logic itself of contingent matter. But this he does 
not even attempt. On the contrary, after misstating the custom of 
" our universities," he actually overlooks the existence of the prac- 
tical logic of contingent matter altogether ; — then, assuming ma- 
thematics, the logic of necessary matter, to be the only practical 
logic in existence, he lightly concedes to it the victory over theo- 
retical logic, on the ground, that "reasoning, a practical process, 
must be taught by practice better than by precept." The primary 
condition and the whole difficulty of the problem is thus eluded ; 
for it behoved him to have proved, not to have assumed, the para- 
dox : — That the study of necessary reasoning alone, is a better 
exercise of the habits of probable reasoning, than the practice of 
probable reasoning itself, and that^ also, illustrated by the theory of 
the laws of thought and of reasoning in general. We may at once 
admit, that theoretical logic realizes its full value only through its 
practical applications. But does it therefore follow, — either that 
a useful practice is independent of theory, or that we shall come 
best trained to the hunting-field of probability , by assiduous loco- 
motion on the railroad of calcxdus and demonstration ? But of 
this hereafter. 

Having laid it down by this very easy process, that " Mathe- 
matics are a means of forming logical habits better tluin Logic 
itself" Mr Whewell broaches the important question : — 

" How far the study thus recommended is justly chargeable with evil con- 
sequences?. . . .Does it necessarily make men too little sensible to other than 
mathematical reasonings ? Does it teach them to require a kind of funda- 
mental principles and a mode of deduction which are not in reality attainable 
in questions of morals or politics, or even of natural philosophy ? If it does 
this, it may well unfit men for the most important employments of the human 
mind, &c. . . . But is this, in fact, usually the case? And if it happen 
sometimes, and sometimes only, under what circumstances does it occur? 
This latter question has, I think, important practical bearings, and I shall 
try to give some answer to it. 

" I would reply, then, that [1°,] if mathematics be taught in such a man- 



264 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

ner, that its foundations appear to be laid in arbitrary definitions without any 
corresponding act of the mind ;— or [2°,] if its first principles be represented 
as borrowed from experience, in such a manner that the whole science is em- 
pirical only ; — or [3°,] if it be held forth as the highest perfection of the 
science to reduce our knowledge to extremely general propositions and pro- 
cesses, in which all particular cases are included : — so studied, it may, I con- 
ceive, unfit the mind for dealing with other kinds of truth." (P. 8.) 

The development and illustration of these three propositions 
occupy the remainder of the pamphlet. 

Now, it will be observed that Mr Whewell does not here or 
elsewhere, attempt any vindication of mathematics from those 
charges to which it is thus acknowledged to be obnoxious ; for it 
is no defence of the study in general, against which alone these 
accusations have from all ages been advanced, to admit, nay, to 
exaggerate, the evil tendency of certain petty recent opinions, 
w T holly uncontemplated by the accusers. 

The principal value of Mr Whewell's pamphlet lies in the special 
illustrations of the first and third heads. There the mathemati- 
cian is within his sphere. On these we should not have been in- 
disposed to offer some remarks ; but the technical nature of the 
subject could not interest the general reader ; and in the words of 
Rabbinic apophthegm, — " Dies brevis, et opus multum, et pater- 
familias urget." 

The second head, in which Mr Whewell trenches on philosophy, 
we cannot altogether overlook. He says : — 

" I will not suppose, that any person who has paid any attention to mathe- 
matics does not see clearly the difference between necessary truths and em- 
pirical facts ; between the evidence of the properties of a triangle, and that 
of the general laws of the structure of plants. The peculiar character of 
mathematical truth is, that it is necessarily and inevitably true ; and one of 
the most important lessons which we learn from our mathematical studies is 
a knowledge that there are such truths, and a familiarity with their form and 
character. 

" This lesson is not only lost, but read backwards, if the student is taught 
that there is no such difference, and that mathematical truths themselves are 
learnt by experience. I can hardly suppose that any mathematician would 
hold such an opinion with regard to geometrical truths, although it has been 
entertained by metaphysicians of no inconsiderable acuteness, as Hume. We 
might ask such persons how Experience Can show, not only that a thing is, 
but that it must be ; by what authority she, the mere recorder of the actual 
occurrences of the past, pronounces upon all possible cases, though as yet to 
be tried hereafter only, or probably never. Or, descending to particulars ; 
when it is maintained that it is from experience alone that we know that 
two straight lines cannot enclose space, we ask, who ever made the trial, 
and how? and we request to be informed in what way he ascertained that 
the lines with wliich he made his experiment were accurately straight. The 



MATHEMATICS NOT PHILOSOPHY. 265 

fallacy is in this case, I conceive, too palpable to require to be dwelt upon." 
-(P. 32.) 

Now, in the first place, it is wholly beyond the domain of ma- 
thematics to inquire into the origin and nature of their principles. 
Mathematics, as Plato * observes, and Proclus,\ are founded on 
hypotheses, of which they can render no account ; and for this 
reason, the former even denies them the denomination of Science. 
" The geometer, qua geometer," says Aristotle, " can attempt no 
discussion of his principles." J As observed by Seneca : — " The 
Mathematical is, so to speak, a superficial science ; it builds on a 
borrowed site, and the principles, by aid of which it proceeds, are 
not its own : Philosophy, on the contrary, begs nothing from an- 
other ; it rears its own edifice from its own soil." % These autho- 
rities represent the harmonious opinion of philosophers and ma- 
thematicians, in ancient and in modern times. 

But, in the second place, if a mathematician know so little of 
his province, as to make such an inroad into that of the philoso- 
pher, we cannot for our life imagine, how a metaphysical flourish 
at the head of a mathematical system can affect the treatment 
of the science, and through that affect the mind of the student. 
We doubt, indeed, whether one mathematician in a hundred has 
ever possessed an opinion, far less the right to an opinion, on the 
matter. 

In the third place, what are we to think of the assumption, 
that the study of mathematics is requisite to make us aware of 
the existence of Necessary Cognitions — Necessary Truths ? That 
certain notions, that certain judgments, there are, which we are 
compelled to recognise as necessary, is a fact that was never un- 
known to, was never denied by, any rational being. Whether 
these necessary notions and judgments are truths, has been in- 
deed doubted by certain philosophers ; but of this doubt mathe- 
matics can afford us no solution, — no proper materials for a solu- 
tion. The very propositions on which these sciences build their 
whole edifice of demonstration, are as well known by the tyro 
when he opens his Euclid, as by the veteran Euler or Laplace ; 
nay, they are possessed, even in prior property, by the philosopher, 
to whom, indeed, the mathematician must look for their vindica- 
tion and establishment. 

* Be Repub. LI. vi. vii. f In Euclid. L. i. p. 22. 

% Post. Analyt. L. i. c. 12, § 3. Compare Phys. L. i. c. 2, text 8. 
^[ Epist. Ixxxviii. 



266 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

But, in the fourth place, if Mr Whewell " can hardly suppose 
that any mathematician would hold the opinion that mathe- 
matical truths are learned from experience," we cannot under- 
stand why he takes the trouble of writing this treatise against 
such an opinion, as actually held, and held by a whole " school 
of mathematics ? " Perhaps, he means by " any mathematician," 
— any mathematician worthy of the name. But then if this 
" school of mathematics" be so contemptible, why write, and that 
so seriously, against them ? This, we may observe, is not the 
only contradiction in the pamphlet we have been wholly unable 
to reconcile. 

But, in the fifth place, the contrast of the mathematician and 
metaphysician is itself an error. — In regard to the exculpation of 
the mathematicians, we need look no farther than to the late Sir 
John Leslie for its disproof. " Geometry" (says that original 
thinker, and he surely was a mathematician.) " is thus founded 
likewise on observation ; but of a kind so familiar and ob- 
vious, that the primary notions which it furnishes might 
seem intuitive." * — As to the inculpation of the metaphysicians, 
— why was Locke not mentioned in place of Hume ? If 
Hume did advance such a doctrine, he only sceptically took up 
what Locke dogmatically laid down. But Locke himself received 
this opinion from a mathematician ; for this part of his philosophy 
he borrows from Gassendi : and, what is curious, he here deserts 
the schoolman from whom he may appear to have adopted, as the 
basis of his philosophy, the twofold origin of knowledge, — Sense 
and Reflection ; for the unacknowledged master maintains on this, 
as on many other questions, opinions far more profound than those 
of his disciple. — But in regard to Hume, Mr Whewell is wholly 
wrong. So far is this philosopher from holding " that geometri- 
cal truths are learnt by experience," that, while rating mathema- 
tical science, as a study, at a very low account, he was all too acute 
to countenance so crude an opinion in regard to its foundation ; 
and, in fact, is celebrated for maintaining one precisely the reverse. 
On this point Hume Avas neither sensualist nor sceptic, but deserted 
Aenesidemus and Locke to encamp with Descartes and Leibnitz. 

In the sixth place, the quality of necessity is correctly stated by 
Mr Whewell as the criterion of a pure or a priori knowledge. 
So far, however, from this being a truism always familiar to ina- 

* Rudiments of Plane Geometry, p. 18 ; and more fully in Elements of 
Geometry and of Geometrical Analysis, p. 453. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 267 

thematicians, it only shows that Mr Whewell has himself been 
recently dipping into the Kantian philosophy ; of which he here ad- 
duces a famous principle and one of the most ordinary illustrations. 
The principle was indeed enounced by Leibnitz, in whom mathe- 
matics may assert a share ; but that philosopher failed to carry it 
out to its most important applications. In his philosophy, our 
conceptions of Space and Time are derived from experience. We 
can trace it also obscurely in Descartes, and several of the older 
metaphysicians ; but assuredly it was nothing "palpable" nothing 
to which the mathematicians can lag claim. On this principle, as 
first evolved,- — at least, first signalised by Kant, Space and Time 
are merely modifications of mind, and mathematics thus only con- 
versant about necessary thoughts, — thoughts which can even make 
no pretension to truth and objective reality. Are the foundations 
of the science thus better laid ? — But to more important matters. 
It is an ancient and universal observation, that different studies 
cultivate the mind to a different development ; and as the end of 
a liberal education is the general and harmonious evolution of its 
faculties and capacities in their relative subordination, the folly 
has accordingly been long and generally denounced, which would 
attempt to accomplish this result, by the partial application of 
certain partial studies. And not only has the effect of a one-sided 
discipline been remarked upon the mind in general, in the dispro- 
portioned development of one power at the expense of others ; 
it has been equally observed in the exclusive cultivation of the 
same power to some special energy, or in relation to some parti- 
cular class of objects. Of this no one had a clearer perception 
than Aristotle ; and no one has better illustrated the evil effects 
of such a cultivation of the mind, on all and each of its faculties. 
He says : — 

u The capacity of receiving knowledge is modified by the habits of the re- 
cipient mind. For, as we have been habituated to learn, do we deem that 
every thing ought to be taught ; and the same object presented in an unfamiliar 
manner, strikes us, not only as unlike itself, but, from want of custom, as 
comparatively strange and unknown. For the accustomed is the better 
known. How great, indeed, is the influence of custom, is manifested in the 
laws ; for here the fabulous and puerile exert a stronger influence, through 
habit, than, through knowledge, do the true and the expedient. Some, 
therefore (who have been overmuch accustomed to mathematical studies), 
will only listen to one who demonstrates like a mathematician ; others (who 
have exclusively cultivated analogical reasoning), require the employment of 
examples ; while others, again (whose imagination has been exercised at the 
expense of judgment), deem it sufficient to adduce the testimony of a poet. 



268 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

Some are satisfied only with an exact treatment of every subject ; to others, 
again, from a trifling disposition, or an impotence of continued thought, the 
exact treatment of any becomes irksome. We ought, therefore, to be edu- 
cated to the different modes and amount of evidence, which the different ob- 
jects^of our knowledge admit."* 

And again : — 

u It is the part of a well-educated man to require that measure of accuracy 
in every discussion, which the nature of its object-matter allows ; for it would 
not be more absurd to tolerate a persuasive mathematician, than to astrict 
an orator to demonstration. But every one judges competently in the matters 
with which he is conversant. Of these, therefore, he is a good judge, — of 
each, he who has been disciplined in each, absolutely, he who has been dis- 
ciplined in all." f 

But the difference between different studies, in their contract- 
ing influence, is great. Some exercise, and consequently develope, 
perhaps, one faculty on a single phasis, or to a low degree ; whilst 
others, from the variety of objects and of relations which they 
present, calling into strong and unexclusive activity the w r hole 
circle of the higher powers, may almost pretend to accomplish 
alone the work of catholic education. 

If we consult reason, experience, and the common testimony of 
ancient and modern times, none of our intellectual studies tend to 
cultivate a smaller number of the faculties, in a more partial or 
feeble manner, than mathematics. This is acknowledged by every 
writer on education of the least pretension to judgment and expe- 
rience ; nor is it denied, even by those who are the most decidedly 
opposed to their total banishment from the sphere of a liberal in- 
struction. Germany is the country which has far distanced every 
other in the theory and practice of education ; and the three fol- 
lowing testimonies may represent the actual state of opinion in 
the three kingdoms of the Germanic union which stand the 
highest in point of intelligence — Prussia, Bavaria, and Wirtein- 
berg. 

The first authority is that of : — Bernhardt, one of the most in- 
telligent and experienced authorities on education to be found in 
Prussia. 

* Metaph. 1. ii. ("AA<p* to 'ih^rrov) c. 3, text. 14. 

f Eth. Nicom. 1. i. c. 3. The text universally received ("Exmgtos It xg/na 

xocKug oi yiuuax.il xcci tovtuv sarlv dyxSog x^n^g' xoc.6 ixxvroy ol^oe. 6 Ksnctihtv f&£- 

vog' a.TT'Acjg Is 6 k£(>1 km Trtiruihvpivos'), is at once detective and tautological. 
The cause of the corruption is manifest ; the emendation simple and, we 

think, certain. "ExotaTOg Bs x^ivn xcCKok a. ytuuaxeK rovTUv cif> IotIv ccyocdog 
KQir'/js' xolS txxoTOV) 6 xcc§ sxciotov nvi^ccibivyvjog^ d.iz'hug hi, 6 ttzqi nav 
KiKctihivyAuos. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 269 

" It is asked — Do Mathematics awaken the judgment, the reasoning faculty, 
and the understanding in general to an all-sided activity f We are compelled 
to answer, — No. For they do this only in relation to a knowledge of quantity, 
neglecting altogether that of quality. — Further, is this mathematical evidence, 
is this coincidence of theory and practice, actually found to hold in the other 
branches of our knowledge'? The slightest survey of the sciences proves the 
very reverse ; and teaches us that mathematics tend necessarily to induce that 
numb rigidity into our intellectual life, which, pressing obstinately straight 
onwards to the end in view, takes no heed or account of the means by which, 
in different subjects, it must be differently attained." * 

The second authority we quote, is that of the distinguished 
philosopher who has long so beneficially presided over the Royal 
Institute of Studies in Munich, — Von Weiller : — 

" Mathematics and Grammar differ essentially from each other, in respect 
to their efficiency, as general means of intellectual cultivation. f The former 
have to do only with the intuitions of space and time, and are, therefore, even 
in their foundation, limited to a special department of our being ; whereas the 
latter, occupied with the primary notions of our intellectual life in general, is 
co-extensive with its universal empire. On this account, the grammatical 
exercise of mind must, if beneficially applied, precede the mathematical. 
And thus are we to explain why the efficiency of the latter does not stretch 
so widely over our intellectual territory ; why it never developes the mind 
on so many sides ; and why, also, it never penetrates so profoundly. By 
mathematics, the powers of thought are less stirred up in their inner essence, 
than drilled to outward order and severity ; and, consequently, manifest their 
education more by a certain formal precision, than through their fertility and 
depth. This truth is even signally confirmed by the experience of our own 
institution. The best of our former Real scholars, when brought into colla- 
tion with the Latin scholars could, in general, hardly compete with the most 
middling of these, — not merely in matters of language, but in every thing 
which demanded a more developed faculty of thought." j 

* Ansichten, Sfc, i. e. Thoughts on the Organization of Learned Schools, by 
A. F. Bernhardi, Doctor of Philosophy, Director and Professor of the Fre- 
derician Gymnasium, in Berlin, and Member of the Consistorial Council, 
1818. 

f Vide Morgensterni Orat. De Litteris Humanioribus, p. 11. 

% From a Dissertation accompanying the Annual Report of the Royal Lnsti- 
tute of Studies, in Munich, for the year 1822, by its Director, Cajetan von 
Weiller, Privy Counsellor, Perpetual Secretary of the Royal Academy of 
Sciences, &c. This testimony is worthy of attention, not merely on account 
of the high talent, knowledge, and experience of the witness, but because it 
hints at the result of a disastrous experiment made by authority of Govern- 
ment throughout the schools of an extensive kingdom ; — an experiment of 
which certain empirics would recommend a repetition amongst ourselves. 
But the experiment, which in schools organized and controlled like those of 
Bavaria, could be at once arrested when its evil tendency was sufficiently 
apparent, would, in schools circumstanced like ours, end only, either in their 



270 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

The third witness whom we call, is one, be it remarked, with a 
stronger bias to realism, in the higher instruction, than is of late, 
after the experience of the past, easily to be found in Germany. 
Professor Klumpp observes : — 

" We shall first of all admit, that mathematics only cultivate the mind on 
a single phasis. Their object is merely form and quantity. They thus remain, 
as it were, only on the surface of things, without reaching their essential 
qualities, or their internal and far more important relations, — to the feelings, 
namely, and the will, — and consequently without determining the higher facul- 
ties to activity. So, likewise, on the other hand, the memory and imagination 
remain in a great measure unemployed ; so that, strictly speaking, the under- 
standing alone remains to them, and even this is cultivated and pointed only 
in one special direction. To a many- sided culture, — to an all-sided harmonious 
excitation and development of the many various powers, they can make no 
pretension. This, too, is strongly confirmed by experience, inasmuch as many 
mere mathematicians, however learned and estimable they may be, are still 
notorious for a certain one-sidedness of mind, and for a want of practical tact. 
If, therefore, mathematical instruction is to operate beneficially as a mean 
of mental cultivation, the chasms which it leaves must be filled up by other 
objects of study, and that harmonious evolution of the faculties procured, which 
our learned schools are bound to propose as their necessary end."* 

To the same general fact, we shall add the testimony of one of 
the shrewdest of human observers, we mean Goethe, who in a 
letter to Zelter thus speaks : — 

" This also shows me more and more distinctly, what I have long in 
secret been aware of, that the cultivation afforded by the Mathematics is, in 
the highest degree, one-side and contracted. Nay, Voltaire does not hesitate 
somewhere to affirm, ' j'ai toujours remarque que la geometrie laisse V esprit 
ou elle le trouve." 1 Franklin, also, has clearly and explicitly enounced his 
particular aversion for mathematicians ; as he found them, in the intercourse 
of society, insupportable from their trifling and captious spirit.'"} 

Even D'Alembert, the mathematician, and professed encomiast 



ruin, or in their conversion from inadequate instruments of a higher culti- 
vation to effective engines of a disguised barbarism. We may endeavour, 
erelong, to prevent the experience of other nations from being altogether un- 
profitable to ourselves. 

"Felix quern faciunt aliena pericula cautum." 

* Die Gelchrten Schulen, Sec, i. e. Learned Schools, according to the prin- 
ciples of a genuine humanism, and the demands of the age. By F. W. Klumpp, 
Professor in the Royal Gymnasium of Stuttgart. 1829, vol. ii. p. 41. An 
interesting account of the seminary established on Klumpp's principles, by 
the King of Wirtcniberg, at his pleasure palace of Stetten, in 1831, is to be 
found in the Conversations Lexicon fuer neuesten Zvit. i. p. 727. 

t Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter. 1833, i. p. 430. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 271 

of the mathematics, cannot deny the charge that they freeze and 
parch the mind : but he endeavours to evade it. 

" We shall content ourselves with the remark, that if mathematics (as is 
asserted with sufficient reason) only make straight the minds which are without 
a bias, so they only dry up and chill the minds already prepared for this ope- 
ration by nature.' 1 ''* 

Yet what a confession ! The Cambridge catholicon is thus a 
dose which never bestows health, but tends always to evolve the 
seeds of disease. 

Nay, Descartes, the greatest mathematician of his age, and, 
in spite of his mathematics, also its greatest philosopher, was con- 
vinced from his own consciousness, that these sciences, however 
valuable as an instrument of external science, are absolutely per- 
nicious as a mean of internal culture. Baillet, his biographer, 
frequently commemorates this ; and first under the year 1623, 
the 28th of the philosopher, he records of Descartes, that : — 

" It was now a long time, since he had been convinced of the small utility 
of the Mathematics, especially when studied on their own account, and not 
applied to other things. There was nothing, in truth, which appeared to 
him more futile than to occupy ourselves with simple numbers and imaginary 
figures, as if it were proper to confine ourselves to these trifles (bagatelles) 
without carrying our view beyond. There even seemed to him in this some- 
thing worse than useless. His maxim was, that such application insensibly 
disaccustomed us to the use of our reason, and made us run the danger of 
losing the path which it traces." {Cartesii Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, 
Reg. iv. MSS.) — [The words themselves of Descartes deserve quotation : — 
" Re vera nihil inanius est, quam circa nudos numeros figurasque imagina- 
rias ita versari, ut velle videamur in talium nugarum cognitione conquiescere, 
atque superficiariis istis demonstrationibus, quae casu saepius quam arte 
inveniuntur, et magis ad oculos et imaginationem pertinent, quam ad intel- 
lectum, sic incubare, ut quodammodo ipsa ratione uti desuescamus; simulque 
nihil intricatius, quam tali probandi modo, novas ditncultates confusis nume- 
ris involutas, expedire. Quum vero postea cogitarem, unde ergo fieret, 
ut primi olim Philosophiae inventores, neminem Matheseos imperitum ad 
studium sapientiae vellent admittere, [a fable, the oldest recorder of which 
flourished some sixteen centuries subsequent to Plato,] tanquam haec dis- 
ciplina omnium facillima et maxime necessaria videatur, ad ingenia capes- 
sendis aliis niajoribus scientiis erudienda et prjeparanda; plane suspicatus 
sum, quamdam eos Mathesim agnovisse, valde diversam a vulgari nostrae 
aetatis."] — Baillet goes on: — "In a letter to Mersenne, written in 1630, M. 
Descartes recalled to him that he had renounced the study of mathematics 
for many years ; and that he was anxious not to lose any more of his time in 
the barren operations of geometry and arithmetic, studies which never lead to 

* Melanges, t. iv. p. 184, ed. 1763. [Compare also Esprit de VEncycl. II. 
p. 349.] 



272 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

any thing important." — Finally, speaking of the general character of the phi- 
losopher, Baillet adds : — " In regard to the rest of mathematics," (he had just 
spoken of astronomy, which Descartes thought, " though he dreamt in it him- 
self, only a loss of time") — "in regard to the rest of mathematics, those who 
know the rank which he held above all mathematicians, ancient and modern, 
will agree that he was the man in the world best qualified to judge them. 
We have observed that, after having studied these sciences to the bottom, 
he had renounced them as of no use for the conduct of life, and solace of man- 
kind."* 

We shall refer to Descartes again. 

How opposite are the habitudes of mind which the study of the 
Mathematical and the study of the Philosophical sciences f require 
and cultivate, has attracted the attention of observers from the 
most ancient times. The principle of this contrast lies in their 
different objects, in their different ends, and in the different modes 
of considering their objects; — differences in the sciences them- 
selves, which calling forth, in their cultivators, different faculties, 
or the same faculty in different ways and degrees, determine 
developments of thought so dissimilar, that in the same indi- 
vidual a capacity for the one class of sciences has, not without 
reason, been considered as detracting from his qualification for 
the other. 

As to their objects. — In the first place : — The Mathematical 
sciences are limited to the relations of quantity alone, or, to speak 

* La Vie de Descartes, P. i. pp. Ill, 112, 225. P. ii. p. 481.— [The 
Regular of Descartes, extracted also in the Port Royal Logic, were published, 
in full, at Amsterdam, in 1701. They are found in the third volume of 
Garnier's edition of the " (Euvres Philosophiques de Descartes," (that is, his 
works to the exclusion of the Mathematical and Physical writings) ; and were 
translated into French by M. Cousin, in his edition of the whole works of 
the philosopher.] 

f [Reminded by the preceding note, — it may be proper here to remark 
upon the vague universality which is given to the terms philosophy and phi- 
losophical in common English; an indefinitude limited specially to this 
country. Mathematics and Physics may here be called philosophical sciences ; 
whereas, on the Continent, they are excluded from philosophy, philosophical 
being there applied emphatically to those sciences which are immediately or 
mediately mental. Hegel, in one of his works, mentions that in looking over 
what in England are published under the title of " Philosophical Transac- 
tions," he had been unable to find any philosophy at all. This abusive em- 
ployment of the words is favoured, I believe, principally at Cambridge ; for 
if Mathematics and Physics arc not philosophical, then that university must 
confess that it now encourages no philosophy whatever. The history of this 
insular peculiarity might easily be traced.] 



REASONS WHY MATHEMATICAL STUDY UNIMPROVING. 273 

more correctly, to the one relation of quantities — equality and 
inequality; the Philosophical sciences, on the contrary, are 
astricted to none of the categories, are coextensive with existence 
and its modes, and circumscribed only by the capacity of the 
human intellect itself. — In the second place : — Mathematics take 
no account of things, but are conversant solely about certain 
images ; and their whole science is contained in the separation, 
conjunction, and comparison of these. Philosophy, on the other 
hand, is mainly occupied with realities ; it is the science of a real 
existence, not merely of an imagined existence. 

As to their ends, and their procedure to these ends. — Truth or 
knowledge is, indeed, the scope of both ; but the kind of know- 
ledge proposed by the one is very different from that proposed 
by the other. — In Mathematics, the whole principles are given ; 
in Philosophy, the greater number are to be sought out and esta- 
blished. — In Mathematics, the given principles are both material 
and formal, that is, they afford at once the conditions of the con- 
struction of the science, and of our knowledge of that construction 
(principia essendi et cognoscendi). In Philosophy, the given prin- 
ciples are only formal — only the logical conditions of the abstract 
possibility of knowledge. — In Mathematics, the whole science is 
virtually contained in its data ; it is only the evolution of a poten- 
tial knowledge into an actual, and its procedure is thus merely 
explicative. In Philosophy, the science is not contained in data ; 
its principles are merely the rules for our conduct in the quest, in 
the proof, in the arrangement of knowledge : it is a transition from 
absolute ignorance to science, and its procedure is therefore am- 
pliative. — In Mathematics we always depart from the definition ; 
in Philosophy, with the definition we usually end. — Mathematics 
know nothing of causes ; the research of causes is Philosophy ; the 
former display only the that (to Srt) ; the latter mainly investi- 
gates the why (to lion). * — The truth of Mathematics is the har. 

* [By cause^ &c, with modern philosophers, I mean efficient cause, and 
should have stated this articulately, had the possibility of ambiguity ever 
been suggested. When I therefore said that Philosophy and Mathematics 
are distinguished, in that the former is, and the latter is not, a research of 
causes, I, of course, meant and mean efficient causes. A very acute philoso- 
phical mathematician, Professor Boole, in his " Mathematical Analysis of 
Logic," (pp. 11, sq., 81, sq.) makes me in this contradict Aristotle ; and 
he is literally correct in his quotation from the Posterior Analytics, -where 
Aristotle does declare, that the geometer investigates the hon. Mr Boole 
has not, however, recollected, that Aristotle had four causes ; and, as Ma- 
thematics are confessedly occupied with thz formal, the philosopher, not only 

s 



274 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— 

mony of thought and thought ; the truth of Philosophy is the 
harmony of thought and existence. — Hence the absurdity of all 
applications of the mathematical method to philosophy. 

It is. however, proximately in the different modes of considering 
their objects that Mathematics and Philosophy so differently culti- 
vate the mind. 

In the first place : — Without entering on the metaphysical na- 
ture of Space and Time, as the basis of concrete and discrete 
quantities, of geometry and arithmetic, it is sufficient to say that 
Space and Time, as the necessary conditions of thought, are, 
severally, to us absolutely one ; and each of their modifications, 
though apprehended as singular in the act of consciousness, is, at 
the same time, recognised as virtually, and in effect, universal. 
Mathematical science, therefore, whose notions (as number, figure, 
motion) are exclusively modifications of these fundamental forms, 
separately or in combination, does not establish their universality 
on any a posteriori process of abstraction and generalization ; but 
at once contemplates the general in the individual. The universal 
notions of philosophy, on the contrary, are, with a few great ex- 
ceptions, generalizations from experience ; and as the universal 
constitutes the rule under which the philosopher thinks the indi- 
vidual, philosophy consequently, the reverse of mathematics, 
views the individual in the general. 

In the second place : — In Mathematics, quantity, when not di- 
vorced from form, is itself really presented to the intellect in a 
lucid image of phantasy, or in a sensible diagram ; and the quan- 
tities which cannot thus be distinctly construed to imagination and 
sense, are, as only syntheses of unity, repetitions of identity, ade- 
quately, though conventionally, denoted in the vicarious combina- 
tion of a few simple symbols. Thus both in geometry, by an 
ostensive construction, and in arithmetic and algebra, by a sym- 

in the place adduced, but in sundry others, therefore states, that the mathema- 
tician is conversant about the why. But even Aristotle was fully aware, 
that the term cause or principle properly and emphatically pertains only to 
the efficient; and accordingly in his Eudemian Ethics, (ii. 6 ) he states this, 
adding, as an example, that what in mathematics are called principles, are so 
styled, not in propriety, but only by analogy or resemblance. He indeed expressly 
denies to them the efficient, &c. (Metaph. iii. 2. alibi.) 

Mr Boole, likewise, has not observed, that it is not Abstract, Pure or Theo- 
retical Logic which I oppose to Mathematics, but that I oppose to each other 
two Concrete, Applied or Practical Logics ; to wit, that of necessary matter= 
mathematics, and that of contingent matter philosophy and common reason- 
ing. Sec p. 262.] 



REASONS WHY MATHEMATICAL STUDY UN1MPR0VING 275 

bolical, the intellect is relieved of all effort in the support and 
presentation of its objects ; and is therefore left to operate upon 
these in all the ease and security with which it considers the con- 
crete realities of nature. Philosophy, on the contrary, is princi- 
pally occupied with those general notions which are thought by the 
intellect but are not to be pictured in the imagination ; and yet, 
though thus destitute of the light and definitude of mathematical 
representations, philosophy is allowed no adequate language of its 
own ; and the common language, in its vagueness and insufficiency, 
does not afford to its unimaginable abstractions that guarantee 
and support, which, though less wanted, is fully obtained by its 
rival science, in the absolute equivalence of mathematical thought 
and mathematical expression. 

In the third place : — Mathematics, departing from certain ori- 
ginal hypotheses, and these hypotheses exclusively determining 
every movement of their procedure, and the images or the vicari- 
ous symbols about which they are conversant being clear and 
simple, the deductions of these sciences are apodictic or demon- 
strative ; that is, the possibility of the contrary is, at every step, 
seen to be excluded in the very comprehension of the terms. On 
the other hand, in Philosophy (with the exception of the Theory 
of Logic), and in our reasonings in general, such demonstrative 
certainty is rarely to be attained ; probable certainty, that is, 
where we are never conscious of the impossibility of the contrary, 
is all that can be compassed ; and this also, not being internally 
evolved from any fundamental data, must be sought for, collected, 
and applied from without. 

From this general contrast it will easily be seen, how an exces- 
sive study of the mathematical sciences not only does not prepare, 
but absolutely incapacitates the mind, for those intellectual ener- 
gies which philosophy and life require. We are thus disqualified 
for observation, either internal or external, — for abstraction and 
generalization, — and for common reasoning ; nay disposed to the 
alternative of blind credulity or of irrational scepticism. 

That mathematics, in which the objects are purely ideal, in 
which the principles are given, in which, from these principles, 
the whole science is independently developed, and in which de- 
velopment the student is, as Aristotle expresses it, not an actor, 
but a mere spectator ; — that mathematics can possibly in their 
study educate to any active exercise of the powers of observation, 
either as reflected upon ourselves, or as directed on the affairs of 



276 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

life and the phenomena of nature, will not, we presume, be main- 
tained. But of this again. 

That they do not cultivate the power of generalisation is equally 
apparent. The ostensive figures of Geometry are no abstractions, 
— but concrete forms of imagination or sense ; and the highest 
praise, accorded by the most philosophical mathematicians, to the 
symbolical notation of arithmetic and algebra, is, that it has 
relieved the mind of all intellectual effort, by substituting a sign 
for a notion, and a mechanical for a mental process. In mathe- 
matics, genus and species are hardly known. 

Geometry, indeed, has been justly considered as cultivating 
rather the lowest degree of the imagination * than any higher 
power of the understanding. — " The geometer " (says Philoponus 
or rather Ammonius) " considers the divisible forms in the imagina- 
tion ; for he uses his imagination as his board." f " Those rejoice " 
(says Albertus Magnus), " in the mathematical sciences whose 
organ of imagination for receiving figures is temperately dry and 
warm"\ — " Among philosophers," (says Fracastorius,the mathe- 
matician, the philosopher, the poet,) " some delight to investigate 
the causes and substances of things, and these are the Philosophers, 
properly so called. Others again, inquiring into the relations of 
certain accidents, are chiefly occupied about these, such as num- 
bers and figures, and, in general, quantities. These latter are 
principally potent in the faculty of imagination, and in that part 
of the brain which lies towards its centre ; this, therefore, they have 
hot, and capacious, and excellently conservative. Hence, they 
imagine well how things stand in their wholes and in relation to 
each other. But we have said, that every one finds pleasure in 
those functions which he is capable of performing well. Wliere- 
fore, these principally delight in that knowledge which is situate 

* In this country, the term Imagination has latterly been used in a more 
contracted signification, as expressive of what has been called the creative 
or productive imagination alone. Mr Stewart has even bestowed on the re- 
productive imagination the term Conception; — happily, we do not think; as 
both in grammatical propriety, and by the older and correcter usage of phi- 
losophers, this term (or rather the product of this operation — Concept) is 
convertible with general ?wtion, or more correctly notion, simply, and in this 
sense is admirably rendered by the Begriff (what is grasped up) of the Ger- 
mans. 

t In Aristot. de Anima, Sign. B. iv. ed. Trincavelli, 1535.— (Aristot. 1. i. 
text. 16.) So Themistius, frequently. 

X InMetaph. Aristot. L. 1. tract i. c. 5. So Averroes, frequently. 



MATHEMATICS DO NOT CONDUCE TO GENERALISATION. 277 

in the imagination, and they are denominated Mathematicians" * 
Though no believers in Gall, there can, however, we think, be no 
doubt, that in the same individual there are very different degrees 
of imagination for different objects ; and of these one of the most 
remarkable is, the peculiar capacity possessed by certain persons 
of presenting and retaining quantities and numbers, — the condi- 
tion of a mathematical genius. — " The study of mathematics " 
(says Descartes, and he frequently repeats the observation,) prin- 
cipally exercises the imagination in the consideration of figures 
and motions." f Nay, on this very ground, he explains the inca- 
pacity of mathematicians for philosophy. " That part of the 
mind," says he, in a letter to Father Mersenne, " to wit, the 
imagination, ivhich is principally conducive to a skill in mathema- 
tics, is of greater detriment than service for metaphysical specula- 
tions" X Sir Kenelm Digby acutely says : — " I may observe, as 
our countryman Roger Bacon did long ago, that those students, 
who busy themselves much with such notions as reside wholly in 
the Fantasie, do hardly ever become idoneous for abstracted meta- 
physical speculations ; the one having bulkie foundation of matter, 
or of the accidents of it, to settle upon (at least with one foot) ; 
the other flying continually, even to a lessening pitch, in the sub- 
tile air. And, accordingly, it hath been generally noted, that 
the exactest mathematicians, who converse altogether with lines, 
figures, and other differences of quantity, have seldom proved 
eminent in metaphysics or speculative divinity; nor again, the 
professors of these .sciences, in the other arts. Much less can it 
be expected that an excellent physician, whose fancy is always 
fraught with the material drugs, that he prescribeth his apothe- 
cary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured 
to the cutting up, and eyes to the inspection, of anatomised bodies, 
should easily and with success, flie his thoughts at so towering a 
game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soid." || — The 
dependence of mathematics on the lower imagination is recognised, 
in like manner, in the Kantian philosophy and its modifications. 

But the study of mathematical demonstration is mainly recom- 
mended as a practice of reasoning in general ; and it is precisely, 
as such a practice, that its inutility is perhaps the greatest. — 
General reasoning is almost exclusively occupied on contingent 

* De Intellectione, L. ii. Opera, f. 148, ed. 3. Venet. 1584. 

t Lettres, p. i. let. xxx. 

J Epist. p. ii. ep. xxxiii. 

|| Observations on Sir Thos. Brown's Religio Medici, sub initio. 



278 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

matter ; if mathematical demonstration therefore supplies, as is 
contended, the best exercise of practical logic, it must do this by 
best enabling us to counteract the besetting tendencies to error, 
and to overcome the principal obstacles in the way of our probable 
reasonings. JSTow, the dangers and difficulties of such reasoning 
lie wholly, — 1) in its form, — 2) in its vehicle, — 3) in its object-mat- 
ter. Of these severally. 

1.) As to the form: — The study of mathematics educates to no 
sagacity in detecting and avoiding the fallacies which originate in 
the thought itself of the reasoner. — Demonstration is only demon- 
stration, if the necessity of the one contrary and the impossibility 
of the other be, from the nature of the object-matter itself, abso- 
lutely clear to consciousness at every step of its deduction. Mathe- 
matical reasoning, therefore, as demonstrative, allows no room 
for any sophistry of thought ; the necessity of its matter necessi- 
tates the correctness of its form ; and, consequently, it cannot 
forewarn and arm the student against this formidable principle 
of error. Mr Whewell, indeed, says, that — " In Mathematics 
the student is rendered familiar with the most perfect examples 
of strict inference ; compelled habitually to fix his attention on 
those conditions on which the cogency of the demonstration 
depends ; and in the mistaken and imperfect attempts at demon- 
stration made by himself or others, he is presented with examples 
of . the most natural fallacies, which he sees exposed and cor- 
rected." (P. 5.) We must be pardoned for observing that we 
should have wished the connexion of the first clauses of this sen- 
tence and the last, had been instructed by something better than 
an " and;" also that the novel assertions in this last itself had 
been explained and exemplified. Were the truth of our argu- 
ment not sufficiently manifest of itself, we might appeal to the 
fact, noticed by Aristotle and confirmed by all subsequent expe- 
rience, that of the sciences, mathematics alone have continued to 
advance without " shadow of turning," and even (as far as their 
proper objects are concerned) without dispute. Mathematics 
have from the first been triumphant over the husk ; Philosophy 
is still militant for the kernel. Logic, therefore, as the doctrine 
of the form of reasoning, so valuable in every other subject, is 
practically valueless in mathematics; and,, so far from "forming 
logical habits better than logic itself,'' as Mr Whewell intrepidly 
asserts, mathematics cannot in this relation conduce to " logical 
habits" at all. The art of reasoning right is assuredly not to bo 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 279 

taught by a process in which there is no reasoning ivrong. We 
do not learn to swim in water by previous practice in a pool of 
quicksilver. Yet, if mathematics are to be recommended as coun- 
teracting our natural tendency to err, why not also propose the 
mercury as counteracting our natural tendency to sink? Mr 
Coleridge (himself a Cantabrigian) is right, when he says : — " It is 
a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for logic." * 

Since writing the above, we have stumbled on the following- 
passage of Du Hamel, not only a distinguished philosopher but 
a distinguished mathematician : — 

"Ido not find, that geometers are mighty solicitous whether their argu- 
ments be, in formula, compounded according to logical prescription; and 
yet there are none who demonstrate either more precisely or with greater 
conviction. For they usually follow the guidance of nature ; descending 
step by step, from the simpler and more general to the more complex, and 
defining every term, they leave no ambiguity in their language. Hence 
it is, that they cannot err in the form of their syllogisms; for we seldom deviate 
from logical rules, except when we abuse the ambiguity of words, or attri- 
bute a different meaning to the middle term, in the major and in the minor 
proposition. — It is also the custom of geometers to prefix certain self-evident 
axioms or principles, from which all that they are subsequently to demon- 
strate flows. — Finally, their conclusions are deduced, either from definitions 
which cannot be called in question, or from those principles and propositions 
known by the light of nature, and styled axioms, or from other already esta- 
blished conclusions, which now obtain the cogency of principles. They make 
no troublesome inquiry into the mood or figure of a syllogism, nor lavish 
attention on the rules of logic; for such attention, by averting their mind from 
more necessary objects, would be detrimental rather than advantageous." f 

[Arnauld has likewise some observations to the same effect. — 
Huygens and Leibnitz, indeed, truly observe, that mathematicians 
can. and sometimes do, err in point of form. But this aberration 
is rare and exceptional ; it requires, indeed, a most ingenious 
stupidity to go wrong, where it is far more easy to keep right. 
A mathematical reasoning may certainly transgress in form, and 
a railway locomotive may go off the rails. But as a railroad con- 
ductor need not look ahead for ditches and quagmires, so a ma- 
thematician, in his process, is not compelled to be on guard against 
the fallacies which beset the route of the ordinary reasoner.] 

* Table Talk, i. 16. 

f (De Mente Humana, 1. iii. c. 1. Opera, t. ii. p. 351.) See also, instar 
omnium, Fonseca (in Metaph. Aristot. L. ii. c. 3, q. 4, sect. 3.) Leibnitz 
(Opera, t. ii. p. 17) commemorates the notable exploit of two zealous, but 
thick-headed logicians, — Herlinus and Dasypodius by name, — who actually 
reduced the first six books of Euclid into formal syllogisms. 



280 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

But if the study of mathematics do not, as a logical discipline, 
warn the reason against the fallacies of thought, does it not, as 
an invigorating exercise of reason itself, fortify that faculty 
against their influence ? To this it is equally incompetent. The 
principles of mathematics are self-evident ; and every transition, 
every successive step in their evolution, is equally self-evident. 
But the mere act of intellect, which an intuitive proposition deter- 
mines, is of all mental energies the easiest, — the nearest, in fact, 
to a negation of thought altogether. But as every step in mathe- 
matical demonstration is intuitive, every step in mathematical 
demonstration calls forth an absolute minimum of thought ; and 
as a faculty, is always evolved in proportion to its competent 
degree of exercise, consequently mathematics, in determining 
reason to its feeblest energy, determines reason to its most limited 
development. 

In the inertion of this study, the mind, in fact, seldom rises to 
the full consciousness of self-activity. We are here passively 
moved on, almost as much as we spontaneously move. Jt has 
been well expressed : — " Mathematical munus pistrinarium est ; ad 
molam enim alligati. vertimur in gyrum aeqne atque vertimus. ,y 
The routine of demonstration, in the gymnastic of mind, may, 
indeed, be compared to the routine of the treadmill, in the gym- 
nastic of body. Each determines a single power to a low but 
continuous action ; all, not disabled in the ordinary functions of 
humanity, are qualified to take a part in either ; but as few with- 
out compulsion are found to expatiate on the one, so few without 
impulsion are found to make a progress in the other. Both are 
conversant about the necessary ; both depart from data ; of both 
the procedure is by steps ; and in both, the first step being con- 
ceded, the necessity of every other is shown on evidence equally 
intuitive. The one is ever moving, never advancing ; the other 
ever varying to infinity only the expression of the same identity. 
Both are abstract occupations ; and both are thought to disqualify 
for the world ; for though both corrective disciplines, a prejudice 
prevails towards the one, against the moral habits of its votaries, 
towards the other, against their moral reasoning. Among many 
other correspondences, both, in fine, cultivate a single intellectual 
virtue ; for both equally educate to a mechanical continuity of 
attention ; as in each the scholar is disagreeably thrown out, on 
the slightest wandering of thought, 

"Nor is the extreme facility of mathematics any paradox, " No 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 281 

one, almost," says Cicero, " seems to have intently applied him- 
self to this science, who did not attain in it any proficiency he 
pleased;"* " Mathematics are the study of a sluggish intellect" 
says " the Helvetian Pliny ;" \ and Warburton calls " the routine 
of demonstration the easiest exercise of reason, where much less 
of the vigour than of the attention of mind is required to excel." J 
Among the Greeks in ancient, as in the school of Pestalozzi, and 
others in recent times, mathematics were drawn back to the pri- 
mary elements of education. Among a hundred others, Aristotle 
observes that not youths only, but mere boys easily become 
mathematicians, while yet incapable of practical or speculative 
philosophy. || And in regard to boys, it is acknowledged by 
Niemeyer, one of the highest authorities, in education, of our age, 
" to be a fact notorious in all schools, that the minds which mani- 
fest a partiality for this class of abstract representations, possess 
the feeblest judgment in reference to other matters." IT " The 
mathematical genius" (says the learned Bishop of Avranches, an 
admirer of mathematics, and himself no contemptible geometer,) 
" requires much phlegm, moderation, attention, and circumspec- 
tion. All, therefore, that goes to the formation of those brilliant 
minds, to whom has been conceded by privilege the title of beaux- 
esprits, I mean copiousness, variety, freedom, readiness, vivacity, 
— all this is directly opposed to mathematical operations, which 
are simple, slow, dry, forced, and necessary." ** — [Finally, this 
extreme facility of the mathematical processes is not only promptly 
admitted by mathematical authors, but founded on by many of 
them as a strong recommendation of the study. Of these we 
need only mention, among many others, Descartes, Wolf, Daries, 
Colerus, Horrebovius. Weidler, Lichtenberg, &c, &c. ; but to 
these it is unnecessary to give articulate references.] 

This leads us to observe, that to minds of any talent, mathe- 
matics are only difficult because they are too easy. — Pleasure is 
the concomitant of the spontaneous and unimpeded energy of a 
faculty or habit ; and Pain the reflex, either of the compulsion of 
a power to operation beyond its due limits, whether in continuance 

* De Oratore, L. i. c. 3. 
t Zuingerus in Ethic. Nicom. L. vi. c. 9. 
X Julian, Pre/. Works, iv. p. 345. 
|| Eih. Nic. L. vi. c. 8. 
1 Ueber Pestalozzi, 1810, p. 51. See also Klumpp, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 41. 



282 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

or degree, or of the compulsory repression of its spontaneous ten- 
dency to action. A study, therefore, will be agreeable, in pro- 
portion as it affords the conditions of an exercise, spontaneous and 
unimpeded, to a greater number of more energetic faculties ; and 
irksome, in proportion as it constrains either to a too intense or 
too protracted activity, or to no activity at all. It is by reason of 
this principle that mathematics are found more peculiarly intoler- 
able, by minds endowed with the most varied and vigorous capa- 
cities ; for such minds are precisely those which the study mulcts 
of the most numerous and vivid pleasures, and punishes with the 
largest proportion of intensest pains. It cannot, certainly, be said 
that the cultivation of these sciences fatigues a single faculty, by 
urging it to an activity at any moment too intense ; in fact, they 
are felt as irksome, in a great measure, because they do not allow 
even the one power which they partially occupy, its highest 
healthy exercise. In mathematics we attain our end, — " non vi 
sed saepe cadrndo." But the continued and monotonous attention 
they necessitate to a long concatenated deduction, each step in 
the lucid series calling forth, on the same eternal relation, and to 
the same moderate amount, the same simple exertion of reason ; 
— this, added to the inertion to which they condemn all the nobler 
and more pleasurable energies of thought, is what renders mathe- 
matics, in themselves the easiest of all rational studies, — the most 
arduous for those very minds to which studies, in themselves most 
arduous, are easiest. 

In mathematics dulness is thus elevated into talent, and talent 
degraded into incapacity. — " Those," says the Chian Aristo, " who 
occupy themselves with Mathematics to the neglect of Philosophy, 
are like the wooers of Penelope, who, unable to attain the mistress, 
contented themselves with the maids." * — Hipponicus, a mathe- 
matical genius, and general blockhead, of whom his pupil, the phi- 
losopher Arcesilaus, used to say, " that his science must have 
flown into his mouth when yawning," f is the representative of a 
numerous class. — " The mathematician is cither a beggar, a dunce, 
or a visionary, or the three in one," was long an adage in the Euro- 
pean schools. | — " Lourd comme un geometre" || (dull as a mathe- 

* Stobaei Floril, Tit. iv. 110. — We accept, but do not pledge ourselves to 
defend, the interpretation of the universal Gesner. 

f Laert. L. iv. seg. 32. 

X Alstcdii Didactica, c. 12 ; and Muelleri Paramuc Academic^ p. 38. 

|| Encyclopedie y t. iv. p. 627. Art. Geometre, par UAlembert, (in Esprit 
&c.) 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 283 

matician) has also, by the confession of its objects, obtained a 
proverbial currency in the most mathematical nation of Europe. 
— " A dull and patient intellect," says Joseph Scaliger, the most 
learned of men, — " such should be your geometers. A great 
genius cannot be a great mathematician " * — " We see," says 
Roger Bacon, a geometer above his age, " that the very rudest 
scholars are competent to mathematical learning, although unable 
to attain to any knowledge of the other sciences." f — On the 
other hand, to say nothing of less illustrious examples, Bayle, 
the impersonation of all logical subtilty, is reported by Le Clerc 
" to have confessed that he could never understand the demon- 
stration of the first problem of Euclid : % and Wolf, " the 
philologer," the mightiest master of the higher criticism, as we 
are informed by his biographer and son-in-law, " was abso- 
lutely destitute of all mathematical capacity;" nay, " remained 
firmly convinced" (what, as gymnasiarch and professor, he had the 
amplest opportunities of verifying,) " that the more capable a mind 
was for mathematics, the more incapable was it for the other no- 
blest sciences." || 

We are far from meaning hereby to disparage the mathematical 
genius, which invents new methods and formula?, or new and feli- 
citous applications of the old ; but this we assert, — that the most 
ordinary intellect may, by means of these methods and formula?, 
once invented, reproduce and apply, by an effort nearly mechani- 
cal, all that the original genius discovered. The merit of a mathe- 
matical invention is, in fact, measured by the amount of thought 
which it supersedes. It is the highest compliment to the ingenuity 
of a Pascal, a Leibnitz, and a Babbage, in their invention of the 
arithmetical machine, that there would not be required, in those 
who use it, more than the dexterity of a turnspit. The algebraic 
analysis is not an instrument so perfect ; it still requires a modi- 
cum of mind to work it. 

Unlike their divergent studies, the inventive talents of the 
mathematician and philosopher, in fact, approximate. To meta- 
physical intellects, like those of Descartes and Leibnitz, mathe- 
matical discovery shows almost as an easy game. Both were 
illustrious inventors, almost as soon as serious students, of the 

* Scaligerana Secunda, p. 270, Ed. Des Maizeaux. 

f Opus Majus, P. iv. c. 3. 

% Bibl. Choisie, t. xii. p. 223. 

|| Kortum, Leben Wolfs des Philologen. 1833. Yol. i. p. 23. 



284 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

science ; and when the former, at the age of forty-two, published 
the work which, embodying his boyish discoveries, determines the 
grand sera in the progress of the modern analytic, he had for 
seventeen years, as he expressly tells us, completely forgotten even 
the elementary operations of arithmetic. Yet so far was the 
puerile play of the philosopher, in advance of the veteran effort 
of the mathematicians, that it is only about four years, since 
Fourier practically demonstrated how a great principle of Des- 
cartes, previously unappreciated, affords the best and the most 
rapid method for the analysis of numerical equations. 

2.) In regard to the vehicle : — Mathematical language, precise 
and adequate, nay, absolutely convertible zuith mathematical 
thought, can afford us no example of those fallacies tuhich so 
easily arise from the ambiguities of ordinary language; its study 
cannot, therefore, it is evident, supply us with any means of ob- 
viating those illusions from which it is itself exempt. The contrast 
of mathematics and philosophy, in this respect, is an interesting 
object of speculation ; but, as imitation is impossible, one of no 
practical result. 

3.) In respect of the matter : — Mathematics afford us no assist- 
ance, either in conquering the difficulties, or in avoiding the dan- 
gers which toe encounter in the great field of probabilities wherein 
we live and move. 

As to the difficulties: — Mathematical demonstration is solely 
occupied in deducing conclusions; probable reasoning, princi- 
pally concerned in looking out for premises. — All mathematical 
reasoning flows from, and — admitting no tributary streams, — 
can be traced back to its original source : principle and conclu- 
sion are convertible. The most eccentric deduction of the science 
is only the last ring in a long chain of reasoning, which descends, 
with adamantine necessity, link by link, in one simple series, from 
its original dependence. — In contingent matter, on the contrary, 
the reasoning is comparatively short ; and as the conclusion can 
seldom be securely established on a single antecedent, it is 
necessary, in order to realize the adequate amount of evidence, to 
accumulate probabilities by multiplying the media of inference ; 
and thus to make the same conclusion, as it were, the apex of 
many convergent arguments. (Compare Aristot. Anal. Post. 
I. 12, § 13.) In general reasoning, therefore, the capacities 
mainly requisite, and mainly cultivated, are the prompt acute- 
ness which discovers what materials arc wanted for our pre- 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 285 

mises, and the activity, knowledge, sagacity, and research able 
competently to supply them. — In demonstration, on the contrary, 
the one capacity cultivated is that patient habit of suspending all 
intrusive thought, and of continuing an attention to the unvaried 
evolution of that perspicuous evidence which it passively recog- 
nises, but does not actively discover. Of Observation, Experi- 
ment, Induction, Analogy, the mathematician knows nothing. 
What Mr Whewell, therefore, alleges in praise of demonstration, 
— " that the mixture of various grounds of conviction, which is so 
common in other men's minds, is rigorously excluded from the 
mathematical student's," is precisely what mainly contributes to 
render it useless as an exercise of reasoning. In the practical 
business of life the geometer is proverbially but a child : and 
for the theory of science? — the subtlety of mind, the multi- 
formity of matter, lie far beyond calculus and demonstration ; 
mathematics are not the net in which Psyche may be caught, nor 
the chain by which Proteus can be fettered. 

As to the dangers : — How important soever may be the study of 
general logic, in providing us against the fallacies which originate 
both in the form and in the vehicle of reasoning, the error of our 
conclusions is, in practice, far less frequently occasioned by any 
vice in our logical inference from premises, than by the sin of a 
rash assumption of premises materially false. Now if mathema- 
tics, as is maintained, do constitute the true logical caiharticon, 
the one practical propedeutic of all reasoning, it must of course 
enable us to correct this the most dangerous and prevalent of our 
intellectual failings. But, among all our rational pursuits, mathe- 
matics stand distinguished, not merely as affording us no aid 
towards alleviating the evil, but as actually inflaming the disease. 
The mathematician, as already noticed, is exclusively engrossed 
with the deduction of inevitable conclusions, from data passively 
received ; while the cultivators of the other departments of know- 
ledge, mental and physical, are for the most part, actively occu- 
pied in the quest and scrutiny, in the collection and balancing of 
probabilities, in order to obtain and purify the facts on which 
their premises are to be established. Their pursuits, accordingly, 
from the mingled experience of failure and success, have, to them, 
proved a special logic, a practical discipline, — on the one hand, of 
skill and confidence, on the other, of caution and sobriety : Ms, on 
the contrary, have not only not trained him to that acute scent, 
to that delicate, almost instinctive, tact which, in the twilight of 



286 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

probability, the search and discrimination of its finer facts demand ; 
they have gone to cloud his vision, to indurate his touch, to all 
but the blazing light and iron chain of demonstration, leaving 
him, out of the narrow confines of his science, either to a passive 
credulity in any premises, or to an absolute incredulity in all. 

Before, however, proceeding articulately to show how, in diffe- 
rent dispositions, these opposite vices are, both, the natural conse- 
quences of the same common cause, we may first evince that our 
doctrine in regard to the general tendency of mathematical study 
is the universal opinion of those who, from their knowledge and 
their powers of observation, are the best qualified to pronounce 
a judgment. We quote the authorities that chance to linger in 
our recollection; a slight research might multiply- them without 
end. 

On such a question, we, of course, prefer the testimony of 
mathematicians themselves ; they shall constitute our first class, 
and under this head we include those only who have distinguished 
themselves by mathematical publications. 

Of these, the oldest we shall adduce is that miracle of universal 
genius — Pascal : — 

" There is a great difference between the spirit of Mathematics* and the 
spirit of Observation, f — In the former, the principles are palpable, but re- 
mote from common use ; so that from want of custom it is not easy to turn 
our head in that direction ; but if it be thus turned ever so little, the princi- 
ples are seen fully confessed, and it would argue a mind incorrigibly false, to 
reason inconsequently on principles so obtrusive, that it is hardly possible to 
overlook them. — But, in the, field of observation, the principles are in common 
use, and before the eyes of all. We need not to turn our head, to make any 
effort whatsoever. Nothing is wanted beyond a good sight : but good it 
must be ; for the principles are so minute and numerous, that it is hardly pos- 
sible but some of them should escape. The omission, however, of a single prin- 
ciple, leads to error ; it is, therefore, requisite to have a sight of the clearest, 
to discern all the principles ; and, then, a correct intellect to avoid false rea- 
sonings on known principles. — All mathematicians would, thus, be observant, 
had they a good sight ; for they do not reason falsely on the principles which 

* In the original — V esprit de Geometric Geometric, as is usual in French, 
is here employed by Pascal for mathematics in general. 

t In the original — Vesprit de Finesse. It is impossible to render this quite 
adequately in English. Fin is here used for acute, subtile, observant; and 
esprit de finesse is nearly convertible with spirit of acute observation, applied 
especially to the affairs of the world. But as the expressions observant and 
spirit of observation with us actually imply the adjective, the repetition of 
which would be awkward, we have accordingly translated the original by 
these alone. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 287 

they know ; and minds of observation would be mathematical could they turn 
their view towards the unfamiliar principles of mathematics. — The cause why 
certain observant minds are not mathematical, is, because they are wholly 
unable to turn themselves towards the principles of mathematics ; but the 
reason why there are mathematicians void of observation, is, that they do not 
see what lies before them; and that accustomed to the clear and palpable prin- 
ciples of mathematics, and only to reason after these principles have been well 
^een and handled, they lose themselves in matters of observation, where the prin- 
ciples do not allow of being thus treated. These objects are seen with diffi- 
culty ; nay, are felt rather than seen ; and it is with infinite pains that others 
can be made to feel them, if they have not already felt them without aid. 
They are so delicate and so numerous, that to be felt they require a very fine 
and a very clear sense. They can also seldom be demonstrated in succession 
as is done in mathematics ; for we are not so in possession of their principles, 
while the very attempt would, of itself, be endless. The object must be dis- 
covered at once* by a single glance, and not by course of reasoning, — at least 
up to a certain point. Thus it is rare, that mathematicians are observant, or 
that observant minds are mathematical : because mathematicians would treat 
matters of observation by rule of mathematic ; and make themselves ridicu- 
lous by attempting to commence by definitions and by principles, — a mode 
of procedure incompatible with this kind of reasoning. It is not, that the 
mind does not perform the process ; but performs it silently, naturally, and 
artlessly : for its expression surpasses all men, and the consciousness of it 
uppertains to few. — On the other hand, minds of observation, habituated to 
form their judgment at a single glance, are so amazed when propositions are 
laid before them, whereof they comprehend nothing, and wherein to enter, it 
behoves them to pass through definitions and barren principles, which they 
are also unaccustomed thus to consider in detail, — that they are revolted and 
disgusted. But false minds, they are never either observant or mathemati- 
cal. — Mathematicians, who are mere mathematicians, have thus their under- 
standing correct, provided always that every thing be well explained to them 
by definition and principle : otherwise they are false and insupportable ; for 
they are correct only upon notorious principles. — And minds of observation, if 
only observant, are incapable of the patience to descend to the first principles 
of matters speculative and of imagination, of which they have had no expe- 
rience in the usage of the world." * 

Berkeley is our second mathematician. He asks, and his que- 
ries are intended to be answered in the negative : — 

" Whether tedious calculations in algebra and fluxions be the likeliest method 
to improve the mind? And whether men's being accustomed to reason alto- 
gether about mathematical signs and figures, doth not make them at a loss 
how to reason without them ? — Whether whatever readiness analysts acquire 
in stating a problem, or finding apt expressions for mathematical quantities, 
the same doth necessarily infer a proportionable ability in conceiving and ex- 
pressing other matters f " f 

* Pensees, I. Partie, art. 10, sect. 2. 
t Analyst, Qu. 38, 39. 



288 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

*S" Gravesande, our third mathematical testimony, after praising- 
geometry, as an useful exercise of intelligence, inasmuch as its 
principles are simple, its conclusions undoubted, and as it ascends 
from the easiest and simplest to the more difficult and more com- 
plex; and the method of analysis, as cultivating the invention, 
from the necessity it imposes of discovering the intermediate terms 
requisite for bringing given extremes into comparison, (this ad- 
vantage, be it noticed, cannot be allowed to the mere study of the 
method,) proceeds : — 

" But it is not sufficient to have applied the mind to one science ; the more 
widely different among themselves are the ideas which the intellect acquires, 
and concerning which it reasons, the more expanded becomes its intelligence. 
In the mathematical sciences, by a well ordered exercise, the ajDOve-mentioned 
faculties are improved. But there is required, moreover, that these same 
faculties should be exercised upon ideas, now of one kind, now of another, 
and different from mathematical. Those who are habituated to the considera- 
tion of ideas of a single class, however skilful they may be in the handling of 
these, reason absurdly upon other matters. A pliant genius ought to be ac- 
quired ; and this is only to be compassed by applying the mind to a plurality 
of studies, wholly different from each other. . . .We ought to be peculiarly at- 
tentive to this, — that the mind be inured to abstract consideration. Where ideas 
are to be compared, things are never more clearly illustrated than when we 
examine these ideas separately from all others. In such an exercise of mind 
the study of metaphysics is peculiarly usefid, provided that all confused ideas 
be removed, and the others expounded in a natural order." * 

D'Alemhert is the fourth mathematical authority. 

u It seems as if great mathematicians ought to be excellent metaphysicians, 
at least upon the objects about which their science proper is conversant ; 
nevertheless, this is very far from being always the case. The logic of some 
of them is comprehended in their formulae, and does not extend beyond. The 
case resembles that of a man who has the sense of sight contrary to that of 
touch, or in whom the latter of these senses is only perfected at the expense 
of the former. These bad metaphysicians in a science in which it is so easy 
not to reason wrong, would infallibly be much worse, as experience proves, 
on matters in which they had not the calcidusfor a guide.' 1 '' f 

\_Lichtenberg, the celebrated Professor of Mathematics and 
Physics in Goettingen, but who was also something better, being- 
one of the wittiest writers and most philosophical thinkers of his 
country, is our fifth mathematical authority. After stating that 
" Mathematics are not only the most certain of all human sciences, 
but also the easiest," he makes the following observation : — 

* Introductio ad Philosophiam, §■&, § 887, sq. 
f Elemens de Philosophic, c. 15. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 289 

" Mathematics are a noble science, but as for the mathematicians, they are 
often not worth the hangman. It is nearly the same with mathematics as 
with theology ; for, as those who apply themselves to the latter, especially 
if they once obtain an office, forthwith arrogate to themselves the credit of 
peculiar sanctity and a closer alliance with God, though very many among 
them are in reality but good-for-nothing subjects ; in like manner, he who is 
styled a mathematician very frequently succeeds in passing for a dap 
thinker, although under that name are included the veriest dunderheads (die 
groessten Plunderkoepfe) in existence, incapable of any business whatsoever 
which requires reflection, since this cannot be immediately performed by the 
easy process of connecting symbols, which is more the product of routine 
than of thought."*] 

To this category we may also not improperly refer Dugald 
Stewart, for though not an author in mathematical science., he 
was in early life a distinguished professor of mathematics ; whilst 
his philosophical writings prove that, to the last, he had never 
wholly neglected the professional studies of his youth. In other 
respects, it is needless to say that his authority is of the highest. 

" How accurate soever the logical process may be, if our first principles 
be rashly assumed, or if our terms be indefinite and ambiguous, there is no 
absurdity so great that we may not be brought to adopt it ; and it unfortu- 
nately happens that, while mathematical studies exercise the faculty of rea- 
soning or deduction, they give no employment to the other powers of the 
understanding concerned in the investigation of truth. On the contrary, 
they are apt to produce a facility in the admission of data, and a circumscrip- 
tion of the field of speculation by partial and arbitrary definitions. . . . 
When the mathematician reasons upon subjects unconnected with his favour- 
ite studies, he is apt to assume, too confidently, certain intermediate prin- 
ciples as the foundation of his arguments. ... I think I have observed 
a peculiar proneness in mathematicians, on occasions of this sort, to avail 
themselves of principles sanctioned by some imposing names, and to avoid all 
discussion which might lead to an examination of idtimate truths, or involve a. 
rigorous analysis of their ideas''' 1 f 

And much more to the same effect, which we do not quote, as 
the work is, or ought to be, in the hands of every one to whom a 
discussion like the present can be of any interest. 

The other authorities we shall take also in the order of time. 

[The testimonies of Ludovicus Vives, are valuable alike for the 



* [Vennischte Schriften, II., p. 287, 1st ed. — I had resolved to add no 
new authorities to those which the article originally contained ; both because, 
in fact, these were perhaps superabundant, and because there need be no end 
to additions, if any be allowed. But this and those of Vives had been 
intended for the article ; in the haste, however, with which it was prepared, 
they were overlooked, until too late for insertion.] 

f Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, iii. pp. 271, 288, 290. 

T 



290 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

high authority of the witness, and for the number of points to 
which his evidence applies. He says : — 

" These arts [the mathematical] as they appertain to use, so if use be 
superseded, are elevated to matters wholly profitless, affording only a sterile 
contemplation and inquiry without end, in as much as step determines step 
to an infinite series : and whilst the rudiments of these disciplines, and a 
certain legitimate progress in their study, aids, sharpens, and delights the 
mind ; so their intense and assiduous exercise constitutes the torture (carnifi- 
cina?) of noble intellects, — of those horn for the benefit of mankind."* 

" Minds volatile and restless, prone to self-indulgence, and incapable of 
the labour of an unremitted attention, are vehemently abhorrent from these 
studies. For they tie down the intellect, compel it to do this or that, and 
permit it not to wander to any other object. Persons of an oblivious memory 
are, likewise, disqualified ; for if the previous steps be forgotten, not a hun- 
dredth of the others can be retained, — such, in these sciences, is the series 
and continuous concatenation of the proofs. And for this reason, they very 
soon slip from the mind, unless beaten in by frequent exercise. Those ill adapted 
for the other and more agreeable, are frequently the subjects peculiarly fitted 
for these severe and repulsive, studies. But such knowledge, if any one con- 
tinue to indulge himself therein, is without end ; whilst its sedulous pursuit 
leads away from the business of life, and even deprives its votaries of common 
sense"'] f 

After Sir Kenelm Digby, already quoted, (p. 277,) and to whom 
we here again refer, the next is that of Sorbiere, Historiographer 
Royal of France, who, if not a mathematical author himself, was 
the intimate friend of the most distinguished mathematicians of 
his age, — as Gassendi (of whose philosophy he was acknowledged 
even by Bernier to be the most accomplished disciple), Mersenne, 
Fermat, Carcavi, &c. Speaking of Gassendi's disregard of the 
higher geometry and algebra, and his valuing mathematics in 
general, only as the instrument of more important sciences, he 
says : — 

" It is certain that the abstrusest Mathematics do not much conduce, to say 
nothing worse of them, to the acquisition of right reasoning, and the illustration 
of natural phamomena; as every one is aware that mathematicians, distin- 
guished in the higher branches of their science, are sometimes none of the 
most clear-sighted in matters beyond its province. " % 

(And in another work) : — " It is an observation which all the world can 
verify, that there is nothing so deplorable as the conduct of some celebrated 
mathematicians in their own affairs, nor any thing so absurd as their opinions 
on the sciences not within their jurisdiction. I have seen of them, those who 
ruined themselves in groundless lawsuits ; who dissipated their whole means 

* [De Causis corruptarum artium. L. v. c. Be Mathematicis.~] 

f [De tradendis disciplinis. L. iv.] 

% Vita Gassendi; Praefi Operum Gassendi. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 291 

in quest of the philosopher's stone; who built extravagantly; who embarked 
in undertakings of which every one foresaw the ill success ; who quaked for 
terror at the pettiest accident in life ; who formed only chimeras in politics ; 
and who had no more of our civilisation than if born among the Hurons or 
the Iroquois." — (After a curious example.) " Hence, sir, you may form 
some judgment of how far algebra conduces to common sense, when the ques- 
tion is not about an affair of figures, and if there be not reason to believe, 
that its abstractions are themselves of a noxious influence in the commerce of 
the world. They are too minute for the ordinary usage of civil society ; and 
it is requisite to incorporate them with something less spiritual, in order 
that the thought may not be so piercing, so decisive, and so difficult to con- 
trol." * 

Clarendon : — 

" The Earl of Leicester was a man of great parts, very conversant in 
books, and much addicted to the mathematics ; but though he had been a sol- 
dier, and commanded a regiment in the service of the states of the United 
Provinces, and was employed in several embassies, as in Denmark and 
France, was, in truth, rather a speculative than a practical man, and expected 
a greater certitude in the consultation of business, than the business of this 
world is capable of, which temper proved very inconvenient to him through 
the course of his life." f 

Le Clerc: — 

" There is also sometimes to be considered so great a number of Modes 
and Relations, and these so minute, that they cannot, without a far greater 
expense of time than we can afford them, be arranged in geometric order. 
And yet to form a correct judgment in regard to these, is a matter of much 
greater importance to us than concerning mathematical problems. Such are 
the various affections of the minds of men and of the affairs of life, concern- 
ing which, the most expert geometers do not judge better than their neighbours, 
nay, frequently worse. It is a question, for instance, whether a certain plan 
or undertaking is to have a prosperous result. In that undertaking there 
are a multitude of ideas which cannot be brought to an issue unless in a 
great variety of ways, which again depend on innumerable circumstances. 
Those accustomed to mathematical ideas, which are very easily observed, and 
very easily discriminated from each other, when, by the rules of their science 
they attempt to judge of the administration of public or private affairs, arrive 
at conclusions the most absurd. For they take into account only the abstract 
possibilities, omitting in their reasonings certain dispositions of things and 
persons, which by their multiplicity and minuteness, almost elude the acutest 
observation. It also happens, for the most part, that they who judge cor- 
rectly in regard to such matters are wholly wrong in regard to mathematical 
questions, if, indeed, they do not eschew them as difficult, and alien from 
their habits." % 

Buddeus : — 

" Such is the nature of the human mind, that, if habituated to certain 

* Lettres, let. lxviii. f History, &c. vol. ii., p. 153, Ed. 1704. 

% Clerici Logica, Pars. iii. c. 3, §§ 13, 14. 



292 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

kinds of thought, it cannot forthwith divest itself thereof, when passing to 
the consideration of other objects, but conjures up notions concerning these, 
analogous to those already irradicated in it by custom. This is the real cause 
of errors almost infinite. Thus they, who inconsiderately carry over mathe- 
matical notions into morals and theology, seem to themselves to find in these new 
sciences the same necessary connexion which they discovered in the old.' 1 ' 1 * 

Barbeyrac, speaking of the notes on Grotius De Jure Belli, 
&c. by Feldenns, professor of mathematics at Helmstadt, of which 
Salmasius " had promised mountains and marvels," says : — 

"Never was there seen aught more wretched ; and we might be surprised 
that a mathematician could reason so ill, had we not other, and far more illus- 
trious examples, which clearly evince, that the study of the mathematics dots 
not always render the mind more correct in relation to subjects beyond the sphere 
of these sciences.'''' f 
Warburton : — 

•" It may seem, perhaps, too much a paradox to say, that long habit in this 
•science (mathematics') incapacitates the mind for reasoning at large, and especially 
in the search of moral truth. And yet, I believe, nothing is more certain. 
The object of geometry is demonstration, and its subject admits of it, and is 
almost the only one that doth. In this science, whatever is not demonstra- 
tion is nothing, or, at least, below the sublime inquirer's regard. Probabi- 
lity, through its almost infinite degrees, from simple ignorance up to absolute 
certainty, is the terra incognita of the geometrician. And yet here it is, that 
the great business of the human mind is carried on, — the search and discovery 
of all the important truths which concern us as reasonable creatures. And 
here too it is, that all its vigour is exerted; for to proportion the assent to the 
probability accompanying every varying degree of moral evidence, requires 
the most enlarged and sovereign exercise of reason. But the harder the use of 
any thing, the more of habit is required to make us perfect in it. Is it then 
likely that the geometer, long confined to the routine of demonstration, the 
easiest exercise of reason, where much less of the vigour than of the attention 
of mind is required to excel, should form a right judgment on subjects whose 
truth or falsehood is to be rated by the probabilities of moral evidence ? " % 
Basedow : — 

"Mathematics tolerate no reasoning from analogy. Of the coacervation of 
proofs from many probable grounds ; of arguments from the certainty and 
adaptation of thought ; of the collison of proofs ; of useful probabilities: of 
exceptions from ordinary truths in extraordinary circumstances, — of all these 
they take no account. Everything, on the contrary, is determinate^ certain 
from the commencement ; of exceptions no mathematician ever dreams. But 
is this character of thought applicable to the other branches of our knowledge f The 
moment we attempt to treat logic, morals, theology, medicine, jurisprudence, 
politics, criticism, or the theory of the fine arts in this mathematical method, we 

* Isagogc Historico- Theologica, 1. i , c. 4. 

f Preface to his Grotius, t. i., p. ix., Ed. 1724. 

\ Julian, Pref. p. xix., Works, vol. iv.. p. 345. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 293 

play the part, not of philosophers but of dreamers, and this to the great detri- 
ment of human reason and happiness," &c. &c* 
Walpole : — 

u The profound study of mathematics seems to injure the more general and 
useful mode of reasoning — that by induction. Mathematical truths being, so 
to speak, palpable, the moral feelings become less sensitive to impalpable 
truths. As when one sense is carried to great perfection, the others are usually 
less acute, so mathematical reasoning seems, in some degree, to injure the 
other modes of ratiocination? f 
Gibbon : — 

" From a blind idea of the usefulness of such abstract science, my father had 
been desirous, and even pressing, that I should devote some time to the Ma- 
thematics ; nor could I refuse to comply with so reasonable a wish. During 
two winters I attended the private lectures of M. de Traytorrens, who ex- 
plained the elements of algebra and geometry, as far as the conic sections of 
the Marquis de l'Hopital, and appeared satisfied with my diligence and im- 
provement. But as my childish propensity for numbers and calculations was . 
totally extinct, I was content to receive the passive impressions of my pro- 
fessor's lectures, without any active exercise of my own powers. As soon as I 
understood the principles, I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathe- 
matics ; nor can 1 lament that I desisted before my mind was hardened by the 
habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, 
which must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our lives." % 
Kirwan : — 

" Some have been led to imagine, — ' that the true way of acquiring a habit 
of reasoning closely, and in train, is to exercise ourselves in mathematical de- 
monstrations ; that having got the way of reasoniDg which that study neces- 
sarily brings the mind to, they may be able to transfer it to other parts of 
knowledge as they shall have occasion.' This, however, is an egregious mis- 
take ; the mode of reasoning of mathematicians being founded on the relation 
of identity or equality, is not transferable to any other science into which ma- 
thematical considerations do not enter, as ethics, jurisprudence, whether 
natural or municipal, medicine, chemistry, theology, metaphysics, &c, which 
are founded on relations entirely different. On the contrary, the habit of 
mathematical reasoning seems to unfit a person for reasoning justly on any other 
subject] for, accustomed to the highest degree of evidence, a mathematician 
frequently becomes insensible to any other." || 
De, Stael : — 

" The study of languages, which in Germany constitutes the basis of edu- 
cation, is much more favourable to the evolution of the faculties, in the 
earlier age, than that of mathematics, or of the physical sciences. Pascal, 
that great geometer, whose profound thought hovered over the science which 
he peculiarly cultivated, as over every other, has himself acknowledged the 

* Philalethie. Bd. ii., §. 179. 

f Walpoliana, vol. i., p. 113. 

X Life in Miscellaneous Works, vol. i., p. 92, Ed. 1814. 

|| Logick, vol. i., Pref. p. iii. 



294 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

insuperable defects of those minds which owe their first formation to the mathe- 
matics. This study, in the earlier age, exercises only the mechanism of intel- 
ligence. In boys, occupied so soon with calculations, the spring of imagina- 
tion, then so fair and fruitful, is arrested ; and they acquire not, in its stead, 
any pre-eminent accuracy of thought, — for arithmetic and algebra are limited 
to the teaching, in a thousand forms, propositions always identical. The 
problems of life are more complicated ; not one is positive, not one is abso- 
lute ; we must conjecture, we must decide by the aid of indications and 
assumptions, which bear no analogy with the infallible procedure of the cal- 
culus. Demonstrated truths do not conduct to probable truths ; which alone, 
however, serve us for our guide in business, in the arts, and in society. 
There is, no doubt, a point at which the mathematics themselves require that 
luminous power of invention, without which it is impossible to penetrate 
into the secrets of nature. At the summit of thought the imaginations of 
Homer and of Newton seem to unite ; but how many of the young, without 
mathematical genius, consecrate their time to this science ! There is exer- 
cised in them only a single faculty, whilst the whole moral being ought to be 
under development at an age when it is so easy to derange the soul and the 
body in attempting to strengthen only a part. Nothing is less applicable to 
life than a mathematical argument. A proposition, couched in ciphers, is de- 
cidedly either true or false. In all other relations the true and the false are 
so intermingled, that frequently instinct alone can decide us in the strife of 
motives, sometimes as powerful on the one side as on the other." * 

We have already noticed in general that, beyond the narrow 
sphere of necessary matter, mathematicians are disposed to one or 
other of two opposite extremes, — credulity and scepticism. The 
cause is manifest. 

Alienated, by the opposite character of their studies, from those 
habits of caution and confidence, of skill and sagacity, which the 
pursuit of knowledge in the universe of probability requires and 
induces ; they are constrained, when they venture to speculate be- 
yond their diagrams and calculations, either, to accept their facts, 
on authority, if not on imagination, — or, to repudiate altogether, 
as unreal, what they are themselves .incapable of verifying. These 
opposite dispositions are not, however, incapable of conjunction ; 
they are indeed often united in the same individual, but in relation 
to different objects. 

This twofold tendency of mathematical study has frequently 
been noticed. In reference to philosophy, it is observed by 
Salat, a distinguished German metaphysician : — 

" The study of Mathematics, unless special precaution be taken, is rather 
a hinderance than an aid. — For, in so far as the mathematician, accustomed 
to his own mode of thinking, and ignorant of any other, applies, or does not 

* De rAllemagne, t, i. c. 18. p. IBS. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE CREDULITY. 295 

apply it to the supersensible, — what must follow? In the former case, the 
supersensible world is denied, inasmuch as it cannot be mathematically de- 
monstrated ; and, in the latter, affirmed only on the ground of feeling and 
imagination. Thus, on the one alternative, the mathematician becomes ne- 
cessarily a Materialist] on the other, a Mystic." * 

Of the two extremes, that of credulity, as relative, at least, to 
the affairs of life, is by far the more frequent and obtrusive. Mr 
Dugald Stewart seems even not indisposed to explain the apparent 
manifestations of the opposite tendency, on the ground of credu- 
lity alone. He says : — 

" In the course of my own experience, Ihave never met with a mere mathe- 
matician who was not credulous to a fault: credulous not only with respect to 
human testimony, but credulous also in matters of opinion ; and prone, on 
all subjects which he had not carefully studied, to repose too much faith in 
illustrious and consecrated names The atheism and material- 
ism professed by some late mathematicians on the Continent, is, I suspect, 
in many cases, to be ascribed to the very same cause ; a credulity yielding 
itself up as blindly to the fashionable disbelief of the day, as that of their 
predecessors submitted itself to the creed of the Infallible Church." f 

Our limits, we regret, preclude us from adverting to Mr Stew- 
art's ingenious suggestion of one cause, at least, of the disposition 
shown by mathematicians to fanaticism ; but we shall quote his 
testimony to the phenomenon. 

"It is a certain fact, that, in mathematicians who have confined their 
studies to mathematics alone, there has often been observed a proneness to 
that species of religious enthusiasm in which imagination is the predominant 
element, and which, like a contagion, is propagated in a crowd. In one of our 
most celebrated universities, which has long enjoyed the proud distinction of 
being the principal seat of mathematical learning in this island, I have been 
assured, that if, at any time, a spirit of fanaticism has infected (as will occa- 
sionally happen in all numerous societies) a few of the unsounder limbs of 
that learned body, the contagion has invariably spread much more widely 
among the mathematicians than among the men of erudition. Even the strong 
head of Waring, undoubtedly one of the ablest analysts that England has 
produced, was not proof against the malady, and he seems at last (as I was 
told by the late Dr Watson, Bishop of Llandaff ) to have sunk into a deep 
religious melancholy, approaching to insanity." % 

On this principle of facile credence, it is to be explained why of 
metaphysicians, the most fanciful and most confident speculators 
have been usually the most mathematical. Pythagoras, Plato, 
Cardan, Descartes, Mallebranche, and Leibnitz, are names not 

* Grundzuege der allgemeiner Philosophic ; by J. Salat, Ordinary Profes- 
sor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Landshut, &c. 1820. 
f Elements, vol. iii. pp. 271, 280. 
% Ibid. p. 291. 



296 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

more distinguished for their philosophical genius than for their 
philosophical credulity. Conversant, in their mathematics, only 
about the relations of ideal objects, and exclusively accustomed 
to the passive recognition of absolute certainty, they seem in their 
metaphysics almost to have lost the capacity of real observation 
and of critically appreciating comparative degrees of probability. 
In their systems, accordingly, hypothesis is seen to take the place 
of fact ; and reason, from the mistress, is degraded to the hand- 
maid, of imagination. 

" Mathematical science," says the marvellous Prince of Miran- 
dola, " does not bestow wisdom : it was therefore, by the ancients, 
made the discipline of boys. On the contrary, though preparing 
for philosophy, it previously sipped in moderation, when raised to 
an object of exclusive study, it affords the greatest occasions of 
philosophical error. To this Aristotle bears evidence." * 

" Descartes," says Voltaire, " was the greatest mathematician 
of his age ; but mathematics leave the intellect as they find it. 
That of Descartes was too prone to invention. He preferred the 
divination to the study of nature. The first of mathematicians 
produced nothing almost but romances of philosophy." f A more 
felicitous expression had been preoccupied by Father Daniel ; — ■ 
" The philosophy of Descartes is the romance of nature." But 
in fact, Descartes himself was author of the mot : — " My theory 
of vortices is a philosophical romance." 

In regard to Leibnitz, even his intelligent and learned friend, 
the^rs^ Queen of Prussia, was not blind to the evil influence of 
his mathematics on his philosophy. She was wont to say, with 
an eye to the " Pre-established Harmony " and " Monads," — 
" that, of all who meddled with philosophy, the mathematicians 
satisfied her the least, more especially when they attempted to 
explain the origin of things in general, or the nature of the soul 
in particular ; and that she was surprised, that, notwithstanding 
their geometrical exactness, metaphysical notions were, for most of 
them, lost countries, and exhaustless sources of chimeras. \ 



* Joannes Picns Mirandulanus in Astrologiam, 1. xii. c. 2. He is still 
more decided in his Conclusiones : — " There is nothing more hurtful to a 
divine than a frequent and assiduous exercise in the mathematics of Euclid." 
(lxxxv. 6.) Sec also his nephew's (John Francis) Examen Vanitatis Doc- 
trince Gentium, l. iii. c. G. 

f Le Slecle de Louis, xiv. c. 29. 

X Hist. Crit. de la Republique des Lettres, t. xi p. 128. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE CREDULITY. 297 

" There are four celebrated metaphysicians," says Condillac, — 
" Descartes, Mallebranche, Leibnitz, and Locke. The last alone 
was not a mathematician, and yet, how greatly is he superior to 
the other three ?"* This may be disputed. 

But, if such be even the metaphysical, what, out of their 
sciences, are other mathematicians ? It is enough to say, that 
astrology was the least visionary of Kepler's beliefs ; whilst 
Napier and Newton and Whiston sought, and found their fancies 
in the Apocalypse, — a book of which a great Anglican divine 
has said, that, " it either finds a man mad, or leaves him so." 

The causes that determine the mathematician to an irrational 
belief, determine him also to an irrational confidence in his opinions. 

Poiret, that deep-thinking mystic, truly observes : — 

" From the same source, mathematicians are also infested with an over- 
iceening presumption or incurable arrogance; for, believing themselves in pos- 
session of demonstrative certainty in regard to the objects of their peculiar 
science, they persuade themselves that, in like manner, they possess a know- 
ledge of many things beyond its sphere. Then, co-ordiuatiug these with the 
former, as if demonstrated by equal evidence, they spurn every objection to 
every opinion, with the contempt or indignation they would feel at an endea- 
vour to persuade them that two plus two are not four, or that the angles of 
a triangle are not equal to two right angles," &c. f . 

Warburton : — 

" Besides this acquired inability [p. 292], prejudice renders the veteran 
mathematician still less capable of judging of moral evidence. He who hath 
been so long accustomed to lay together and compare ideas, and hath reaped 
demonstration, the richest fruit of speculative truth, for his labour, regards 
all the lower degrees of evidence as in the train only of his mathematical 
principality ; and he commonly ranks them in so arbitrary a manner, that 
the ratio ultima mathematicorum is become almost as great a libel upon 
common sense as other sovereign decisions. I might appeal for the truth of 
this to those wonderful conclusions which Geometers, when condescending 
to write on history, ethics, or theology, have made of their premises. But 
the thing is notorious ; and it is no secret that the oldest mathematician in 
England is the worst reasoner in it."% 

De Stael : — 

" The study of mathematics, habituating us to certainty, inflames us 
agaiust all opinions in contradiction with our own," &c.|| 

* EArtde Penser, (Cours. t. iii. p. 398, Ed. 1780.) (Euvrts Philosophiques, 
t. vi. p. 225. Ed. 

t De Eruditione Solida, &c. Ed. 1692, p. 306. 
% Julian, Pre/, p. xx. ; Works, iv. p. 346. 
|| De VAllemagne, i. c. 18. 



298 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

Dag old Stewart : — 

u The bias now mentioned, is strengthened by another circumstance, — 
the confidence which the mere mathematician naturally acquires in his 
powers of reasoning and judgment, — in consequence of which, though he 
may be prevented in his own pursuits from going far astray, by the absurdi- 
ties to which his errors lead him, he is seldom apt to be revolted by absurd 
conclusions in the other sciences. Even in physics, mathematicians have been 
ltd to acquiesce in conclusions which appear ludicrous to men of different 
habits: 1 * 

We must refer to the original for some curious and instructive 
instances of this, in Euler, Leibnitz, D. Bernoulli, Grandi, La 
Place, Leslie, Pitcairn, and Cheyne. 

The opposite bias, — the scepticism of the mathematician, is 
principally relative to the spiritual or moral world. His studies 
determine him to this in two ways. — In the first place, by 
abstracting him from the view, and disqualifying him for the 
observation, of the phenomena of moral liberty in man ; and in 
the second, by habituating him to the exclusive contemplation of 
the phenomena of a mechanical necessity in nature. But an 
ignorance of the one order, and an extensive and intimate and 
constant consideration of the other, are tantamount to a nega- 
tion of the unknown. For on the one hand, as we naturally 
believe to exist that only which we know to exist ; and on the 
other, as all science tends to unity, reason forbidding us to 
assume, without necessity, a plurality of causes; consequently 
the mathematician, if he think at all, is naturally and rationally 
disposed to hold, as absolutely universal, what is universal rela- 
tively to his own sphere of observation. 

It is chiefly, if not solely, to explain the one phenomenon of 
morality, of freewill, that we are warranted in assuming a second 
and hyperphysical substance, in an immaterial principle of 
thought ; for it is only on the supposition of a moral liberty in 
man, that we can attempt to vindicate, as truths, a moral order, 
and, consequently, a moral governor, in the universe ; and it is 
only on the hypothesis of a soul within us, that we can assert the 
reality of a God above us, — " N alius in microcosmo Spirit as, 
nullus in macrocosmo Deus." 

In the hands of the materialist, or physical necessitarian, every 
argument for the existence of a deity is either annulled, or 



* Elements) iii. p. 272. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SCEPTICISM. 299 

reversed into a demonstration of atheism. In his hands, with the 
moral worth of man, the inference to a moral ruler of a moral 
world is gone. In his hands, the argument from the adaptations 
of end and mean, everywhere apparent in existence, to the pri- 
mary causality of intelligence and liberty, if applied, establishes, 
in fact, the primary causality of necessity and matter. For as 
this argument is only an extension to. the universe of the analogy 
observed in man : if in man, design, — intelligence, be only a phe- 
nomenon of matter, only a reflex of organization ; this consecution 
of first and second in us, extended to the universal order of things, 
reverses the absolute priority of intelligence to matter, that is, 
subverts the fundamental condition of a deity. Thus it is, that 
our theology is necessarily founded on our psychology ; that we 
must recognise a God from our own minds, before we can detect 
a God in the universe of nature. 

Now, the mathematical sciences, on the one hand, by leaving 
wholly unexercised the capacity of philosophical reflection, pre- 
vent the mind from rising to a clear consciousness of those fun- 
damental facts on which its moral freedom is established ; and on 
the other, by accustoming it to the exclusive contemplation of the 
laws of physical necessity, indispose it to tolerate so extraordi- 
nary an assumption, so indemonstrable an anomaly, as a moral 
order, an hyperphysical liberty, and an immaterial subject. 

This tendency of mathematical study has been always suffi- 
ciently notorious. Hence — (to take only the three contemporary 
fathers) — by St Austin mathematics are said " to lead away from 
God ;" * by St Jerome to be " not sciences of piety ; " * while St 
Ambrose declares, that " to cultivate astronomy and geometry 
is to abandon the cause of salvation, and to follow that of 
error." f 

We may here again refer to Sir Kenelm Digby's testimony, 
previously adduced (p. 277). 

And Poiret, again, who, though a mystic in religion, was one 
of the profoundest thinkers of his age. 

" The mathematical genus is wont, unless guarded against, to imbue the 
minds of its too intemperate votaries with the most pestilent dispositions. 
For it infects them with fatalism, spiritual insensibility, brutalism, disbelief, and 
an almost incurable presumption. For when, in the handling of their num- 
bers, figures, and machines, they perceive all things to follow each other, as 
it were by fate, to the exclusion of liberty ; they hence become so accustomed 

* Vide Agrippam, Be Van. Srient. c. xi. f Officiorum, 1. i. 26. 



300 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

to the consideration of necessary connection alone, that they altogether 
eliminate freewill from the nature and government of things spiritual, and 
establish the universal supremacy of a fatal necessity."* 

So Bayle : — 

" It cannot be disputed, that it is rare to find much devotion in persons who 
have once acquired a taste for t/ie study of the mathematics, and who have made 
in these sciences an extraordinary progress." f 

So Gundling : — 

" He who too zealously devotes himself to the physical and mathematical 
sciences, may lightly lapse into an atheist. Hence Ave find, that all the more 
ancient philosophers were atheists, and this because too exclusively absorbed 
in physical and mathematical contemplations." % 

Berkeley, himself no vulgar mathematician, asks : — 
" Whether the corpus cularian, experimental, and mathematical philoso- 
phy, so much cultivated in the last age, hath not too much engrossed men's 
attention; some part whereof it might have usefully employed? — Whether 
from this, and other concurring causes, the minds of speculative men have 
not been borne downward, to the debasing and stupifying of the higher facul- 
ties? And whether we may not hence account for that prevailing narrow- 
ness and bigotry among many who pass for men of science, their incapacity 
for things moral, intellectual, or theological, their proneness to measure all 
truths by sense and experience of animal life ? " |j 

Dr John Gregory, of a family to which mathematical genius 
seems almost native, and one of the most distinguished founders 
of the Edinburgh School of Medicine, in his " Lectures on the 
Duties and Qualifications of a Physician," after confessing that he 
distrusted his own judgment in relation to the study of mathema- 
tics, as afraid of his partiality to a science which he viewed with 
a kind of innate and hereditary attachment, and which had been 
at once the business and the pleasure of his early years, thus 
warns his pupils : — 

" Let me also desire you to guard against its leading 3-011 to a disposition 
to scepticism and suspense of judgment in subjects that do not admit of mathe- 
matical science. " ^ 

Monboddo : — 

" Those who have studied mathematics much, and no other science, are 
apt to grow so fond of them, as to believe that there is no certainty in any 
other science, nor any other axioms than those of Euclid." ** 

* De Eruditione Solida, p. 304. Ed. 1692. 

f Diet. Hist voce Pascal, note G. 

% Historie o'er Gelehrheit, vol. i. Disc. Prclini. p. 8. 

|| Analyst, Qu. 56, 57. 
% Works, Hi., p. 107. 
** Ancient Metaphysics, i., p. 891. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SCEPTICISM. 301 



De Stael :■ 



" The mathematics lead us to layout of account all that is not proved; 
while the primitive truths, those which sentiment and genius apprehend, are 
not susceptible of demonstration."* 

This tendency in their too exclusive cultivation, to promote a 
disbelief in any other than an order of necessity and nature, is 
common to the physical and the mathematical sciences ; hence, in 
reference to the former, the old adage — " Tres Medici, duo Athei." 
It is, however, when the two studies are conjoined and carried 
out to the most extensive sphere of application, that this tendency 
is more powerfully and conspicuously manifested, — that is, in 
astronomy. 

In the following sublime passage, Kant, with a different inten- 
tion indeed, finely illustrates the opposite influences of material 
and mental studies, and this by the contrast of the two noblest 
objects of our contemplation : — 

" Two things there are, which, the oftener and the more steadfastly we 
consider, fill the mind with an ever new, an ever rising admiration and 
reverence, — the Starry Heaven above, the Moral Laic within. Of neither am 
I compelled to seek out the existence, as shrouded in obscurity, or only to 
surmise the possibility, as beyond the hemisphere of my knowledge. Both 
I contemplate lying clear before me, and connect both immediately with the 
consciousness of my being. — The one departs from the place I occupy in the 
outer world of sense ; expands, beyond the limits of imagination, that con- 
nection of my being with worlds rising above worlds, and systems blending 
into systems ; and protends it also to the illimitable times of their periodic 
movement — to its commencement and continuance. — The other departs from 
my invisible self, from my personality ; and represents me in a world, truly 
infinite indeed, but whose infinity is to be fathomed only by the intellect, 
with which also my connection, unlike the fortuitous relation I stand in to 
the world of sense, I am compelled to recognise, as necessary and universal. 
— In the former, the first view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, 
as it were, my importance as an animal nature, which, after a brief and incom- 
prehensible endowment with the powers of life, is compelled to refund its 
constituent matter to the planet — itself an atom in the universe— on which 
it grew. — The aspect of the other, on the contrary, elevates my worth as 
an intelligence, even to infinitude ; and this through my personality, in which 
the moral law reveals a faculty of life independent of my animal nature, nay, 
of the whole material world : — at least, if it be permitted to infer as much 
from the regulation of my being, which a conformity with that law exacts ; 
proposing, as it does, my moral worth for the absolute end of my activity, 
conceding no compromise of its imperative to a necessitation of nature, 



* De VAllemagne, i., c. 18. 



302 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

and spurning in its infinity the limits and conditions of my present transi- 
tory life."* 

" Spirat enim majora animus seque altius efFert 
Sideribus, transitque vias et nubila fati, 
Et momenta premit pedibus quaecunque putantur 
Figere propositam natali tempore sortem." f 

As a pendant to this, we shall adduce another testimony by a 
profound philosopher of an opposite school; by him whom his 
countrymen have hailed the Plato of the latter age, — Frederic 
Henry Jacobi. 

" What, in opposition to Fate, constitutes the ruling principle of the uni- 
verse into a true God, is termed Providence. Where there is no forecast 
there is no intelligence, and where intelligence is, there also is there provi- 
dence. This alone is mind ; and only to what is of mind, respond the feel- 
ings that manifest its existence in ourselves, — Wonder, Veneration, Love. 
We can, indeed,* pronounce an object to be beautiful or perfect, without a 
previous knowledge that it is the work of foresight or not : but the power by 
which it was produced, that we cannot admire, if, without thought, and with- 
out a purpose, it operated in obedience to the laws of a mere physical neces- 
sity. Even the glorious majesty of the heavens, the object of a kneeling 
adoration to an infant world, subdues no more the mind of him who compre- 
hends the one mechanical law by which the planetary systems move, maintain 
their motion, and even originally form themselves. He no longer marvels at 
the object, infinite as it always is, but at the human intellect alone, which, in a 
Copernicus, Kepler, Gassendi, Newton, and Laplace, was able to transcend 
the object, by science to terminate the miracle, to reave the heaven of its 
divinities, and to disenchant the universe. — But even this, the only admira- 
tion of which our intelligent faculties are now capable, would vanish, were a 
future Hartley, Darwin, Condillac, or Bonnet, to succeed in displaying to us 
a mechanical system of the human mind, as comprehensive, intelligible, and 
satisfactory as the Newtonian mechanism of the heavens. Fallen from their 
elevation, Art, and Science, and Virtue, would no longer be to man the ob- 
jects of a genuine and reflective adoration. The works and actions of the 
heroes of mankind, — the life of a Socrates and Epaminondas, — the science of 
a Plato and Leibnitz, — the poetical and plastic representations of a Homer, 
Sophocles, and Phidias, — these might still pleasurably move, might still 
rouse the mind to an enjoyment rising into transport ; even so as the sen- 
sible aspect of the heavens might still possibly affect and gratify the dis- 
ciple of a Newton or Laplace: but we must no longer ask about the prin- 
ciple of our emotion ; for reflection would infallibly chide our puerile 
infatuation, and dash our enthusiasm by the suggestion — That Wonder is only 
the daughter of Ignorance." % 

* Or. d. pr. V. Beschluss. This suggests Prudentius. 
f Prudent. Contra Si/tn. ii. 479. 

% \Werkc, ii. p. 54. — The philosophy of the modern Plato is, in tins re- 
spect, strictly correspondent with the philosophy of the ancient. ,fc The doc- 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SCEPTICISM. 303 

We shall terminate our cloud of witnesses with the testimony 
of a celebrated metaphysician, a distinguished professor also of 
mathematics and physics in one of the principal universities of 
Germany. Fries, in his Lectures on Astronomy thus speaks : — 

" But it is rejoined, — You explain every thing by your omnipotent gra- 
vitation ; — what is the origin of that ? I answer : — This, too, we know 
full well ! The daughter of the old blind Fate, her servants Magnitude, 
Number, and Proportion, her inheritance a universe without a God, which 

requires no God When the great astronomer Lalande denied a 

deity, — could trace in the heavens no God, in the movement of the stars no 
finger of God, we are compelled to allow the logical consequence of his rea- 
soning. That high order and adaptation of end and means is only the pro- 
duct of the rigid mechanism of necessary physical laws ; there, above, is 
only a blind mindless destiny, the absolute ruler of its universe. But I appeal 
to the truth of the saying in St John, — " In the spirit only shall we worship 
Godf and in what only our science is for mind, are its dignity and value to be 
found. He alone can style the order of the universe an adaptation of means 
to end, who brings to its observation a belief in the reality of design. But 
the true interpretation of the order of design, lies far more clearly apparent in 
the mind of man. The infinite spirit does not bail itself under proportion and 
number ! The play with number is an easy play, — its joy only the joy of the 
imprisoned spirit at the clank of its fetters." * 

Are Mathematics then of no value as an instrument of mental 
culture ? Nay, do they exercise only to distort the mind ? To 
this we answer : That their study, if pursued in moderation and 
efficiently counteracted, may be beneficial in the correction of a 
certain vice, and in the formation of its corresponding virtue. 
The vice is the habit of mental distraction ; the virtue the habit 

trine," (to this effect speaks the Athenian), " which has propagated impiety 
among men, and occasioned all erroneous opinions concerning the nature of 
the Deity : is that, which reversing the real consecution of existence, affirms 
in regard to the generation of the universe, that to be posterior which is, in 
truth, the cause ; and that to be antecedent, which is only the effect. For, 
though mind and its operations are anterior to matter and its phenomena, 
and though nature and natural production are preceded and determined by 
intelligence and design ; some, however, have preposterously sisted nature 
as the first or generative principle, and regarded mind, as merely the deriva- 
tive of corporeal organism." (De Legibus, x.) The relative passage of Plato 
is, I see, quoted by the great Cudworth, (in Cambridge, " there were giants 
in those days,") in his Immutable Morality (B. iv. ch. 6, § 6. sq.) (In con- 
nection with this matter, I may here notice a monstrous erratum (§ 14) 
which stands, both in the English edition of that posthumous work, pro- 
cured by Chandler, Bishop of Durham, and, what is more remarkable, in the 
Latin version by the learned Mosheim ; contemplation for contemperation.)'] 
* Vorlesungen ueber die Sternkunde, pp. 16, 18, 227. 



304 * STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

of continuous attention. This is the single benefit, to which the 
study of mathematics can justly pretend, in the cultivation of the 
mind ; and it is almost the one only, or at least the one principal, 
accorded to it by the most intelligent philosophers. — Bacon, who 
in his earlier writings admitted the utility of mathematics in 
sharpening the intellect ; in his maturer works recommended a 
study of the school philosophy, as the best discipline of subtility 
and discrimination.* — In like manner, the mathematical philoso- 
pher Da Hamel seems to accord no higher mental advantage to 
the mathematics ; and at the same time observes, that " they 
have this of vice, that for the most part they render us alien and 
abhorrent from the business of life" \ — Of mathematical science 
Warburton holds, that besides affording us a knowledge of its 
peculiar method, " all its use, for the purpose in question, (the 
improvement of the powers of reasoning), seems to be onlv habi- 
tuating the mind to think long and closely ; and it would be well 
if this advantage made amends for some inconveniences, as inse- 
parable from it." \ — This, likewise, is all that is admitted of the 
study by one of the most acute and cautious observers of the 
human mind and its modifications, and whose predilections, if Ave 

* In the first edition of his Essays, published in 1597, Bacon says, 
" Mathematiks make men subtill;" but having learned better in the inter- 
val, in the second, which appeared fifteen years thereafter, he withdrew tins 
commendation, and substituted the following, which stands unaltered in all 
the after editions ; — " If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathe- 
matiks ; for in demonstrations if his thought be called ever so little away he 
must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences 
[i. c. be not subtile], let him study the schoolmen, fur they are the Cymini 
sectores" — By the by, a mistake as to the meaning of the adage. — (Essay 
on Studies.) [Here there is, I find, an oversight. Though at a different 
place of the same Essay, " Mathematics" are said to " make men subtile;'' 
and this even in the last editions of the work.] In like manner, in The 
Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, he says of mathematics, "If 
the wit be too dull, they Sharpen it ; if too wandering, they fix it ; if too 
inherent in the sense, they abstract it." (Book II. Mathematique.} But in 
the relative place of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, the great work m 
which, after a meditation of eighteen years, the Advancement was corrected, 
remodelled, and greatly enlarged, he disallows the first and third of these 
utilities, and admits only the second. " Si cuipiara ingenium tale est quale 
est avium, ut facile abripiatur, nee per moram [qualein oportet) intentum 
esse sustineat; remedium huie rei prsebebnnl mathematica, in qnibus si 
evagetur paulo mens, de Integra reuovanda est dnuonstratio." (L. vi. 
c. 4.) 

t De Mente Humana, L. i. e. 8. J Julian, Pref., p. xviii. 



TRUE USE OF MATHEMATICAL STUDY. 305 

could suppose him biassed, were naturally all in favour of its 
importance, — we mean Mr Dugald Steivart. A skilful mathe- 
matician, his writings abound with allusions to that science ; but 
we make bold to say, that there is not to be found in the whole 
compass of his works a single passage attributing another or a 
higher advantage to mathematical study, in relation to the mind, 
than that of " strengthening the power of steady and concate- 
nated thinking." Nay, when controverting Mr Hume's contemp- 
tuous estimate of the utility and importance of mathematics, and 
when thus called upon to specify their various uses, he ascribes 
to them any value, not as affording a profitable exercise of mind, 
but exclusively, " as an organ of physical discovery, and as the 
forndation of some of the most necessary arts of civilized life." * 
And, in the chapter of his Philosophy of the Human Mind, 
entitled, The Mathematician, — a chapter admirable alike for its 
depth and its candour, — the improvement of the power of conti- 
nuous attention is the only benefit which he admits ; and that, 
likewise, to the express exclusion of the mechanical process of the 
algebraic analysis, — an exclusion in which he is supported by the 
highest practical authorities in education. " This command of 
attention, however, it may be proper to add, is to be acquired, 
not by practice of the modern methods, but by the study of the 
Greek geometry ; more particularly, by accustoming ourselves to 
pursue long trains of demonstration, without availing ourselves of 
the aid of any sensible diagrams; the thoughts being directed 
solely to those ideal delineations which the powers of conception 
and of memory enable us to form."f 

[This observation of Stewart suggests the propriety of stating 
more articulately the contrast of the two species of mathematics, 
— the Geometric or Ostensive, and the Algebraic or Symbolical. 
The former was invented, and exclusively cultivated, in anti- 
quity ; the latter, which owes its origin to the Arabians, has been 
principally perfected during the two last centuries. These species 
of mathematics differ in their methods ; exert a different influence 
on their student ; and merit cultivation, by different persons, and 
for different ends. The Geometric process is of a minor advan- 
tage in education ; whereas the study of the Algebraic, if carried 
beyond a very limited extent, is positively disadvantageous. As 
instruments of science, however, and where the mathematician is 



* Dissertation, &c. p. 171. f Elements, vol. iii. p. 269. 



306 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

considered, not as an end to himself, but as a mean towards an 
end out of himself, their comparative superiority is reversed. 
For, in the Geometric method, while the movement is more 
tedious, no step is possible without consciousness and a certain 
self-activity ; whereas the Algebraic, though a more rapid pro- 
cess, works out its result by a mechanical operation, and with 
hardly any awakening of thought. The one thus affords, in some 
respects, an improving exercise to any ; the other a convenient 
instrument, improving to none, and useful only to a few. 

The opinion of Newton himself upon this point is given by 
his friend and expositor, Dr Pemberton, whose words in the 
Preface to his " View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy" are as 
follows : — 

" I have often heard hini censure the handling geometrical subjects by alge- 
braic calculations ; and his book of Algebra he called by the name of Univer- 
sal Arithmetic, in opposition to the injudicious title of Geometry, which 
Descartes had given to the treatise, wherein he shows how the geometer 
may assist his invention by such kind of computations. He frequently 
praised Slusius, Barrow, and Huygens for not being injluenced by the false 
taste which then began to prevail. He used to commend the laudable attempt 
of Hugo de Omerique to restore the ancient analysis, and very much esteemed 
Apollonius's book De Sectione Rationis, for giving us a clearer notion of 
that analysis than we had before. Dr Barrow may be esteemed as having 
shown a compass of invention equal, if not superior to any of the moderns, 
our author only excepted ; but Sir Isaac Newton has several times particu- 
larly recommended to me Huygens's style and manner. He thought him the 
most elegant of any mathematical writer of modern times, and the most just 
imitator of the ancients. Of then taste and form of demonstration Sir Isaac 
always professed himself a great admirer. I have heard him even censure 
himself for not following them more closely than he did, [yet he demonstrated 
every thing ostensively] ; and speak with regret of his mistake at the begin- 
ning of his mathematical studies, in applying himself to the works of Des- 
cartes and other algebraic writers, before he had considered the Elements 
of Euclid with that attention which so excellent a writer deserves."* 

Sir Isaac was conscious that if ever the handmaid should sup- 
plant the mistress, — if ever devotion to the algebraic method 
should supersede the cultivation of the geometric, then would 
mathematics sink from the rank of a liberal study into something 
little better than a handicraft dexterity. What would he have 
said, had he foreseen the present degeneracy of his own univer- 
sity ! 

The next authority which I adduce is that of the profoundest 



* View, &c, Pref. p. ii. 



COMPARATIVE USE OF GEOMETRIC AND ALGEBRAIC STUDY. 307 

thinker whom Italy produced during the last century ; one in 
fact, so far ahead of his own age, that it remained for ours to 
appreciate those great views in politics and history which the 
philosophers of his own country, France, and Germany, are now 
emulously engaged in expounding, vindicating, and applying. 
The following quotation is from an address, which Vico was in 
the habit of annually delivering to the academical youth, on the 
selection and conduct of their studies : — 

" The practice of giving to young men the elements of the science of 
magnitude on the algebraic method, chills all that is lively and vigorous in the 
youthful mind, clouds the imagination, debilitates the memory, dulls the inge- 
nuity, and enervates the intellect; which four are the things most necessary for 
the cultivation of the best pursuits of humanity ; the first for painting, sculp- 
ture, architecture, music, poetry, and eloquence ; the second for the learn- 
ing of languages and of history ; the third for invention ; the fourth for wis- 
dom. . . . And thus with the Algebraic calculus the ingenuity is 
repressed, because in this process we perceive not even what lies most imme- 
diately before us ; — the memory is stupified, because the second sign being 
discovered, we no longer take thought about the first ; — the imagination is 
benighted, because we image to ourselves absolutely nothing ; — the intellect is 
ruined, because we substitute divination for reasoning; — in so much that 
those young men who have spent much time in this study have afterwards, 
to their utmost sorrow and repentance, found themselves disqualified for 
the business of real life. And therefore, in order to render it productive of 
any benefit, and unproductive of those evils which it might otherwise cause, 
Algebra ought to be studied for a short time at the close of the mathe- 
matical course When, in order to find the required quan- 
tity, we should have to encounter great mental fatigue by using the Syn- 
thetic method, we ought then to have recourse to the Algebraic Analysis. 
But in so far as regards reasoning well by this sort of method, it is better to 
acquire the habit by Metaphysical Analysis. * 

The last testimony which I shall adduce, in regard to the oppo- 
site characters, and the different importance of the two species of . 
Mathematics, in an educational point of view, is that of Thiersch, 
one of the most illustrious scholars of Europe, and not inferior to 
any authority in matters of education. The following quotation 
I rudely translate from his work on Learned Schools, in confor- 
mity to the views of which the national seminaries of Bavaria 
have been principally modelled and reformed. It is to be noticed 
that his observations, though relative to Gymnasia and Lycaea, — 
an order of learned schools in Germany inferior to the Universi- 
ties, — apply to a class of students in general more advanced than 
those who matriculate in Cambridge. 

* Ope re Complete, i. p. 31. 



308 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS 

u In order that Mathematical science should be more perfectly accommo- 
dated to the end which a Gymnasium proposes, and brought into so intimate 
a relation with the other branches of study that it may be viewed as their 
complement and equipoise, it is necessary to bring back its method to the 
procedure of the ancients,— of Euclid, of Archimedes, and of Apollonius of 
Perga 

" Though never abandoning the confines of the universal, Geometry 
reduces the laws and attributes of magnitude to perfect clearness, — by 
according to the senses a representation of those lines, surfaces, and solids 
which it conceives with the utmost completeness and precision; and thus 
issuing forth from behind the veil of mental invisibility into the visible and 
palpable, its doctrines may almost be seen and handled, and yet without 
losing aught of their purity and necessity. Thus Geometry, if I may so 
express myself, becomes a thinking with the eye, while Grammar through 
the ear holds intercourse with the inner mind. This relation of its laws to 
determinate figures, this apprehension of the highest and most surprising 
doctrines through the visibility of body, is precisely what at once attracts 
aud animates the young, — what gradually elevates and prepares for high 
abstraction their powers as yet incapable of such an exercise. On this 
account all employment of the Algebraic formula even for conic sections, 
ought to be discarded from the Geometry of the Gymnasium. Essential as 
these are to the Mathematician, in order to rise to the higher regions of his 
science, they are profitless and even hurtful in the course of discipline pre- 
paratory to its acquisition, and in the general cultivation of youth, inasmuch 
as they are only the repetition, in another form, of a procedure already fami- 
liar. He who five or six times transposes or transforms a given equation so 
as in the end to obtain a solution, teaching him, for example, that a projec- 
tile in its flight describes a parabolic curve ; — to be conducted, I say, to this 
important result as by an invisible constraining force, rapidly and unerr- 
ingly, indeed, — this will content him if an adept in Mathematics ; but to 
the student it is profitless, inasmuch as the compulsory conclusion only exhi- 
bits to him in a new formula what he already knew by superfluous expe- 
rience to be true. But something more than this is obtained by him who 
reaches the same truth by the* Geometrical procedure of the ancients, in 
which Algebra was unknown, viz. by the constructive method of figures and 
the intuition founded on it. Whilst the Algebraic formulas conduct us blind- 
fold to the conclusion, the constructive method of Archimedes shows to us 
the whole machinery of the procedure laid open to the light, especially when 
the omission of the intermediate propositions is supplied by an intelligent 
teacher. Here every step is made with open eyes, with consciousness, and 
understanding ; and, in the example adduced, from the harmonic connexion 
of figures, and from the consequences fully and lucidly evolved out of their 
properties, the result is finally obtained of the parabolic flight of projectiles. 
The same is the case with every other law, each being displayed to the view 
of the satisfied and admiring pupil, as a consequence clear and rigorous. 
Nothing can be better calculated than such a process to awaken the intellect 
to the clearest apprehension of the nature and cogency of strict probation ; 
and thus to place it in possession of itself and its highest faculty, — that of 
deducing what is sought from what is given, what is invisible from what is 



COMPARATIVE USE OF GEOMETRIC AND ALGEBRAIC STUDY. 309 

seen, in order, like Archimedes, from a point beyond the earth to move the 
earth itself. What therefore is requisite, and even indispensable, is a com- 
plete and systematic manual of Geometry on the principles of Euclid, Archi- 
medes, and Apollonius Pergaeus, which, assuming their capital propositions, 
and connecting these with others, would afford a comprehensive view of con- 
structive Geometry, in the spirit of antiquity, for the instruction, awakening, 
and improvement of youth." * 

Nay, the present predominance in Cambridge of the Alge- 
braic Mathematics, (a predominance perhaps partly owing to the 
reproach cast by Playfair, some forty years ago, on the ignorance 
prevalent in Cambridge of the Continental analysis, but which, 
assuredly, is no longer applicable, seeing that the second Eng- 
lish University, the second Theological Seminary of the Anglican 
Establishment, is now a second-rate Ecole Poly technique,) — 
this is lamented, and its eifect, as a slaughtering of intellect, 
reluctantly confessed, by the most intelligent friends of Cam- 
bridge herself. The two following extracts from the Quarterly 
Revieiu may suffice to prove this ; for that journal has always 
been the ^champion of the actual system of the English Universi- 
ties, where this could with any justice be defended. — The first is 
from an able article on Paley ; and it is justly considered as a 
sign of his uncommon intellectual vigour, (and this even before 
Cambridge had again turned Anti-Newtonian and Algebraic,) 
that he was senior wrangler, yet his mind not apparently en- 
feebled by the exertion. 

" The Cambridge system of study is a forcing system, which applying 
itself almost wholly to one subject, and being adapted to minds of a single 
cast, frequently debilitates the understanding through life, by the effort to pro- 
duce a single fruitage." f 

What can be confessed, — what can be conceived, worse of a 
University ? 

The second extract is from an intelligent article on the Life of 
Bishop Watson. 

" The period at which Watson appeared in the University of Cambridge 
may justly be regarded as the Augustan age of that University ; the physics 
of Descartes had just before [Watson entered the University in 1757, that 
is seventy years after the publication of the Principia,] given place to the 
sublime Geometry of Newton ; the Metaphysics of human nature, as taught 
by Locke, had supplanted Aristotle ; and the old scholastic Theology had 
been superseded in the schools by a set of rising and enlightened divines, 
under a learned and candid professor. It was certainly to the advantage of the 



* Ueber gelehrten Schulen, iv. Abth. p. 374, seq, 
t Vol. ix. p. 390. 



310 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

academical studies that the higher Algebra was not yet invented, [?] and that 
the study of philosophy [t. e. physics] in general was not hitherto pushed so 
far as either to engross or to exhaust the understanding of the academical 
youth. A due place was also allowed and required for classical pursuits, 
Avhile the purest writers of antiquity were studied, not so much for the pur- 
pose of consummating the knowledge of points and metres, as of acquiring 
the noblest ideas of morals and polities in the clearest and most elegant lan- 
guage. Precisely at this period arose a constellation of young men eminently 
qualified, both by the force of their understandings and the elegance of their 
taste, to avail themselves of these advantages ; and the names of Hurd and 
Powell, of Balguy and Ogden, are never heard by those who knew them or 
know their books, without the associated ideas of all that is clear in ratio- 
cination, profound in research, and beautiful in language. As they disap- 
peared from the scene, abstract mathematics began to prevail in the univer- 
sity ; the equilibrium of study was destroyed; the liberal and manly system 
of education which had produced so many men of business and of the world, 
as well as of science, gradually disappeared ; while the rewards which became 
necessary as stimuli to the higher acquirements of classical literature, tended 
to urge on the pursuits of difficult and recondite miuutise in criticism, as 
inapplicable, in one way, to any practical purpose of life, as the obscurities 
of Waring's Miscellanea Analytica, in another. The effects of this declen- 
sion are but too visible at present in a hard, dry, ' exsuccous' style of writ- 
ing, which has long since superseded, excepting in one or two solitary 
instances, the attic graces of the last generation."* 

But returning from our digressive contrast of the ostensive 
and symbolical, of the geometric and algebraic processes, in an 
educational point of view ; and calling to mind, that the former 
had, exclusively of the latter, been proposed as a mean conducive 
to the one sole intellectual virtue of continuous attention : we pro- 
ceed to consider, how far the study of geometry may pretend to 
be the appropriate discipline even of this.] 

But mathematics are not the only study which cultivates the 
attention ; neither is the kind and degree of attention which they 
tend to induce, the kind and degree of attention which our other 
and higher speculations require and exercise. In the study of 
mathematics we are accustomed, if we may so express ourselves, 
to a protensive, rather than to either an extensive, a comprehen- 
sive, or an intensive, application of thought. It does not compel 
us to hold up before the mind, and to retain the mind upon, a 
multitude of different objects; far less does it inure us to a steady 
consideration of the fugitive and evanescent abstractions and gene- 
ralities of the reflective intellect. Mr Kirwan truly observes : — 
" As to Mathematics habituating the mind to intense application, 

* Vol. xviii. p. 235. 



TRUE USE OF MATHEMATICAL STUDY. 311 

there is no science that does not equally require it, and, in studying 
it, the habit is much more advantageously obtained."* And Madame 
de Stael admirably says : — " I shall be told, I know, that Mathe- 
matics render the attention peculiarly close (appliquee) ; but they 
do not habituate to collect, to appreciate, to concentrate ; the 
attention they require is, so to speak, in a straight line; the 
human mind acts in mathematics as a spring tending in one uni- 
form direction "\ 

We should remember also that the minds for whose peculiar 
malady a course of mathematics, as the appropriate specific, is 
prescribed, are precisely those which will not, in fact, cannot, 
submit to the prescription. " In vain" (observes Du Hamel) 
" do we promulgate rules for awakening attention, if the disposi- 
tion be headlong, instable, presumptuous. Besides, all applica- 
tion of the mind is an act of will, and the will cannot be com- 
pelled." % — After all, we are afraid that Vives and D'Alembert are 
right : Mathematics may distort, but can never rectify, the mind. 

But although of slender, and even ambiguous utility, as a gym- 
nastic of the intellect, mathematics are not undeserving of atten- 
tion, as supplying to the metaphysician and psychologist some 
interesting materials of speculation. The notions, and method, 
and progress of these sciences are curious, both in themselves, 
and in contrast to those of philosophy. Although, therefore, the 
inscription over Plato's school be but a comparatively modern 
fiction, we are willing to admit its truth, — nay, are decidedly of 
opinion, that mathematics ought to be cultivated, to a certain 
extent, by every one who would devote himself to the higher 
philosophy. But, on the other hand, we agree with Socrates, 
who " disapproved of the study of geometry," (and he says the 
same of astronomy,) " when carried the length of its more dif- 
ficult diagrams. For, though himself not inconversant with 
these," (which he had studied under the celebrated geometer, 
Theodorus of Cyrene), " he did not perceive of what utility 
they could be, calculated as they were to consume the life of a 
man, and to turn him away from many other and important 
acquirements." * 

We must now abruptly terminate. Our limits are already 
greatly exceeded. But we must still state, in a few words, what 
many sentences would be required to develope. 

* Logick, I., preface, p. 6. t & e V Allemagne, I., c. 18. 

\ De Mente Humana, 1. i. c. 8. 

|| Xenophontis Memorabilia, 1. iv. c. 7, §§ 3, 5. 



312 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

In extending so partial an encouragement to mathematical and 
physical pursuits, thus indirectly discouraging the other branches 
of liberal education, the University of Cambridge has exactly re- 
versed every principle of academical policy. — What are the 
grounds on which one study ought to be fostered or forced, in 
such a seminary, in preference to others ? 

The first and principal condition of academical encouragement 
is, that the study tends to cultivate a greater number of the nobler 
faculties in a higher degree. That the study of mathematics 
effects any mental development, at best, in a most inadequate and 
precarious manner, while its too exclusive cultivation tends posi- 
tively to incapacitate and to deform the mind, — this it has been 
the scope of the preceding argument to establish. 

The second condition is, that the protected study comprehends 
within its sphere of operation a larger proportion of the academic 
youth. It can easily be shown that, in this respect, mathematics 
have less claim to encouragement than any other object of educa- 
tion. [They present no allurement for those not constrained to a 
degree ; they qualify for none of the professions ; and Cam- 
bridge stands alone in turning out her clergy, accomplished for 
actuaries or engineers, it may be, but unaccomplished for divines.] 

The third is, that it is of greater general utility for the conduct 
of the business, or for the enjoyment of the leisure, of after life. 
— In regard to the business : — For men in general, no study is 
more utterly worthless than that of mathematics. In regard to 
the leisure : — For which, as Aristotle properly observes, a liberal 
education ought equally to provide, this study is of even less im- 
portance than for the business. No academical pursuit has so 
few extra-academical votaries. The reasons are manifest. In the 
first place, mathematics, to be spontaneously loved, require a more 
peculiar constitution of mind and temperament than any other 
intellectual pursuit. In the second, as observed by Plato, no study 
forced in the school is ever voluntarily cultivated in life ; (Tvxfi 
Qionov ovliu kfx^sves pxdyiftoi). In the third, to use the words of Se- 
neca : — " Some things, once known, stick fast ; others, it is not 
enough to have learnt, our knowledge of them perishing when we 
cease to learn. Such are mathematics. ,"* — The maxim, " Nun 
scholae sed vitse discendum," is thus, in every relation, by the 
University of Cambridge, reversed. 

* De Beneficus, 1. iii. e. 5. [See also Vivos, above, p. 290.] 



CAMBRIDGE SYSTEM ABSURD. 313 

The fourth is, that, independently of its own importance, it is 
the passport to other important branches of knowledge. In this 
respect mathematical sciences (pure and applied) stand alone ; to 
the other branches of knowledge they conduce, — to none directly, 
and if indirectly to any, the advantage they afford is small, con- 
tingent, and dispensable. 

The fifth is, that, however important, absolutely and relatively, 
it is yet of such a nature, that, without an external stimulus, it 
will not be so generally and so thoroughly cultivated as it deserves. 
Mathematics, certainly, from the nature of their study, require 
such stimulus ; the question is — Do they deserve it ? 

We cannot conclude, without strongly expressing our sincere 
respect for the venerable school of which, in this article, we have 
endeavoured to expose a modern abuse. With all its defects, 
there is even now, in the spirit of the place, what, were its mighty 
means all as well directed as some already are, would raise it in 
every faculty, in every department, to the highest rank among 
the European universities. Some parts of the reform are dif- 
ficult, and must be accomplished from without. Others are 
comparatively easy, and, it is not too much to hope, may be 
determined from within. Of these, the first and most manifest 
improvement would be the establishment of three Triposes of co- 
ordinate and independent honours ; of which one should comprise 
the different departments of philosophy proper, ancient and mo- 
dern, — another the mathematical and physical sciences, — and a 
third the multifarious branches of classics, classical philology, his- 
tory, &c. We cannot add a word in reference to the expedi- 
ency and details of such a plan ; but, in allusion to a philoso- 
phical Tripos, a noble testimony to the influence of metaphysical 
and moral studies in the improvement of the mind, rises to our 
recollection, which, as peculiarly appropriate to the occasion, we 
cannot refrain from adducing. It is by one of the acutest of 
thinkers, — the elder Scaliger. — " Harum indagatio subtilitatum 
etsi non est utilis ad machinas farinarias conficiendas, exuit tamen 
animum inscitiae rubigine, acuitque ad alia. Eo denique splen- 
dore afficit, ut praeluceat sibi ad nanciscendum primi opificis 
similitudinem. Qui ut omnia plene ac perfecte est, at praeter, et 
supra omnia ; ita eos qui scientiarum studiosi sunt, suos esse voluit, 
ipsorumque intellectum rerum dominum constituit." * 

* De Subtilitate, Exerc. cccvii. 3. [When this was quoted, the fuller ex- 
tract above (p. 40) was in abeyance.] 



NOTE, 

TOUCHING THE PRECEDING ARTICLE, 



(April, 1836.) 



It is contrary to our practice to publish any answers or com- 
plaints, by authors dissatisfied with our criticisms ; but we are 
induced to make an exception of Mr Whewell. He complains, 
that we have not fairly stated the purport of his recent publica- 
tion on the Study of Mathematics. The nature of the charge, 
and the great respectability of the gentleman by whom it is 
made, render it impossible for us to be altogether silent ; we, 
therefore, reprint his letter, (which has already appeared both in 
the Newspapers, and in the second edition of his Pamphlet*), 
with a few observations under the form of Notes, in vindication 
of ourselves. 



" To the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. 

" Cambridge, Jan. 23(/, 1836. 
" My Dear Sir, 
" 1 was gratified to find that a little pamphlet which I recently 
published, as " Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics," had 
excited so much notice as to give it a place at the head of an 
article in the Edinburgh Review ; — and in regard to the manner 
in which the Reviewer has spoken of me, I have certainly no 
reason to be dissatisfied ; nor am I at all disposed to complain 

* [This Letter Mr Whewell republished also in the following year at the end 
of his book " On the Principles of English University Education, " — but 
without the notes in reply. — For that book and for the Preface to his Me- 
chanics, on both of which I shall be obliged to comment, I am indebted to 
the politeness of the author.] 



MR WHEWELL'S LETTER. 315 

of the way in which he has urged his own opinions. But I 
think the article is likely to give rise to a misapprehension which 
ought to be corrected ; and for that purpose I trouble you with 
this letter. 

" I wrote my pamphlet in order to enforce certain views 
respecting the conduct of our mathematical examinations at Cam- 
bridge. The question on which I threw out a few ' Thoughts ' 
was, ivhat kind of mathematics is most beneficial as a part of a 
liberal education. That this was the question to which I was try- 
ing to give some answer I stated in a passage (quoted by the Re- 
viewer) at page 8 of the pamphlet. The previous seven pages, in 
which among other matter I had said a few words on the ques- 
tion, whether mathematics in general, or logic is the better mental 
discipline, were obviously only an introduction to the discussion 
of certain propositions, which, as the Reviewer observes, ' occupy 
the remainder of the pamphlet.' (1) 

" It was therefore with no slight surprise that I looked at the 
magnificent manner in which the Reviewer has spoken of the 
small portion of these seven small pages which refers to the more 
general question. He calls it ' a treatise (a Treatise !) apparently 
on the very point ' (2), (p. 259), ' a vindication of mathematical 
study ' (3), (p. 260) ; and having thus made me work at a task of 
his own devising, he repeatedly expresses great disappointment 
that I have executed it so ill ; — that ' so little is said on the gene- 
ral argument.' I should have thought that this circumstance 
might have helped him to perceive that it was not my general 
argument. 

" I see nothing but the convenient and blameless practice of 
Reviews in making the title of my book the occasion of publishing 
an Essay on a subject only slightly connected with mine ; but it 
appears to me that to attempt to gain a victory by representing a 
page or two of my ' Thoughts ' as containing all that can be said 
by an able, earnest, official advocate en the other side, is not a 
reasonable treatment of the question. The writer proclaims that 
he means to give ' no quarter to my reasonings ; ' but this pro- 
ceeding looks rather like making an unexpected attack on a point 
when he thinks himself well prepared, on the arbitrary pretext 
that the truce has been broken by the adversary. (4) 

" I should have no disinclination on a convenient occasion, to 
discuss the very important and interesting question which is the 



316 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS-NOTE. 

subject of the Review. I cannot, however, look forward with 
confidence to the prospect of my being able to take it up for a 
considerable period; and shall probably leave the Reviewer in 
possession of his self-chosen field of battle for several months, it 
may be years. But if I should return to the subject, I should 
wish to know, as definitely as is possible, what are the questions 
at issue between us; (5) and I would therefore beg from the 
Reviewer information on the following points. 

" The Works, which form our examples of Mathematical 
reasoning are well known ; I wish to know also what works of 
' Practical Logic ' on other subjects (p. 263) the Reviewer is 
willing to propose as rival instruments of education. (6) 

" I wish to have some distinct account of the nature of that 
1 Philosophy ' which is by the Reviewer put in contrast to Mathe- 
matical study (p. 272) ; and if possible to have some work or 
works pointed out, in which this Philosophy is supposed to be 
presented in such a way as to make it fit to be a cardinal point 
of education. 

" I may remark also, that all the Reviewer's arguments, and, 
I believe, the judgments of all his ' cloud of witnesses,' are 
founded upon the nature and processes of pure mathematics only ; 
— on a consideration of the study of the mere properties of space 
and number. My suggestion of the means of increasing the 
utility of mathematical studies was directed mainly to this point ; 
— that we should avoid confining ourselves to pure mathematics ; 
— that we should resort to departments in which we have to deal 
with other grounds of necessary truth, as well as the intuitions of 
space and time : so far, therefore, the Reviewer and I have a 
common aim, and I notice this with the more pleasure, since we 
have so far a better prospect of understanding each other in any 
future discussion. (7) 

" I will not now trespass further on your patience. In order 
to remind my Cambridge readers of the state of the question, I 
shall probably place before them something to the same effect as 
what I have now written. 

" Believe me, my dear Sir, 

" Yours very faithfully, 

« W. Whewell." 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHEWELL'S LETTER. 317 



Notes on the preceding Letter. 

(1) We of course willingly admit whatever Mr Whewell says 
was his intention in writing his pamphlet ; but we must be allowed 
to maintain that, as written, our view of its purport (in recommen- 
dation and defence of mathematics in general, as a mean of liberal 
education,) is the view which every reader, looking either at the 
title of the treatise, or at the distribution and conduct of its argu- 
ment, must necessarily adopt. The title is — " Thoughts on the 
Study of Mathematics, as a part of a Liberal Education." The 
pamphlet opens with a statement of the two counter opinions in 
regard to the study of mathematics, as a mental discipline ; — the 
one holding it to be highly beneficial, the other, highly detrimental. 
Mr Whewell then proceeds : — " Any view of this subject which 
would show us how far and under what circumstances each of these 
opinions is true, would probably help us to see how we must 
regulate our studies so as to make them most beneficial," &c. 
" It is in this belief that the few reflections which follow have 
been written." The plan of the work being thus laid down, the 
author goes on to accomplish the first part of his undertaking, by 
endeavouring to show, that the former opinion is absolutely true ; 
inasmuch as the study of mathematics is conducive, even more 
than logic, to the cultivation of the reasoning faculty. This 
being done, he passes to the second part, and endeavours to 
show, that the latter opinion is conditionally true, inasmuch as 
certain modes of teaching the science, to which Mr Whewell is 
opposed, are given up as worthy of all condemnation. These two 
parts are, ex facie libri, co-ordinate ; nay, so far is the first part, 
though occupying a smaller portion of the pamphlet, from being 
" obviously only an introduction" to the second, that, whatever 
were the intentions of the writer, if the two be not allowed to be 
co-ordinate, the reader must, from the tenor of the writing, hold 
the second to be correlative to the first. For it is only on the 
ground of the first part, — only on the supposition of the general 
argument being conclusive, that the second part, or special argu- 
ment, is allowed by the pamphlet subordinately to emerge. The 
following are the words of transition from the one head to the 
other : — " Supposing, then, that we wish to consider mathematics 
as an element of education, and as a means of forming logical 
habits better than logic itself, it becomes an important question, 



318 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

how far this study, thus recommended, is justly chargeable with 
evil consequences, such as have been already mentioned." Then 
follows the rest of the passage (p. 263) referred to by Mr Whewell 
and quoted in the Review ; where, however, there is not to be 
found a single word of a different tendency. 

(2) We must be allowed to observe, that we did not. That ex- 
pression was used by us in speaking of the whole work, and in 
speaking of it as yet known, only from the advertisement of its 
title. What is Mr Whewell's notion of a treatise ? 

(3) If the first division of the pamphlet be not a " vindication 
of mathematical study as a principal mean in the cultivation of 
the reasoning faculty" (for that is our full expression), what is 
it ? We said that it was too short ; and that it took notice of 
none of the objections to the study in general, as disqualifying the 
mind for observation and common reasoning. We cannot, there- 
fore, justly be accused of allowing it to be supposed, far less of 
holding it out, to be other than what it actually is. How then 
can Mr Whewell assert, as he afterwards does, that we " at- 
tempted to gain a victory by representing a page or two of his 
' Thoughts' as containing all that can be said by an able, earnest, 
official advocate ?" But though the general argument was, as 
we stated, brief and only confirmatory, were we not warranted, 
on that very ground, in supposing that Mr Whewell regarded it 
as of itself sufficiently strong, — as of itself decisive ? Because it 
is shown to be illogical, it does not cease to exist. 

(4) The expression quoted was, in its connexion, manifestly only 
one of personal civility to Mr Whewell. Of all meanings, assu- 
redly the one here put upon it is about the last which it could rea- 
sonably bear. — We were too conscious of the unavoidable haste in 
which the article and its authorities were thrown together, with 
sole reference to Mr Whewell's treatise, to dream of pluming 
ourselves on our preparation for attack. On this ground we 
must even found an excuse for one error at least, incurred in our 
too absolute assertion touching Bacon, in the text [now corrected] 
and relative note at p. 304. — As to " truce," — " pretext,"—" ad- 
versary," we comprehend nothing. 

(5) The one general thesis which we maintained was : — That 
the study of the mathematical sciences is, for reasons assigned, 
undeserving of special encouragement, as a mean of mental culti- 
vation ; and, therefore, that the University of Cambridge, in so 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHEWELL'S LETTER. 310 

far as its system of education bestows not only a special, but a 
paramount, not to say an exclusive, encouragement on these 
sciences, violates every principle of academical policy.* 

* [Dr Whewell on this says : — " The charge, that the University of Cam- 
bridge bestows not only a special but a paramount and exclusive encourage- 
ment on these (the mathematical) sciences is not only unfounded, but is in- 
excusably so, because it is impossible to refer to any record of the prizes 
which the University bestows, without seeing that there is a much greater 
number offered and given in other subjects than in Mathematics." (Me- 
chanics, fifth edition, Preface, p. viii.) 

What I stated (though Dr Whewell is pleased to call it " not only un- 
founded, but inexcusably so,") is literally correct. 

But Dr Whewell, in the, first place, misrepresents my words. I did not 
say, " that the University of Cambridge bestows an exclusive encouragement 
on the mathematical sciences ;" and what I did say, " that the University of 
Cambridge bestows not only a special but a paramount, not to say an exclu- 
sive, encouragement on these sciences," — this is rigidly true. 

But in the second place, Dr Whewell himself asserts what, to use his own 
words, " is not only unfounded, but inexcusably so," inasmuch as he makes 
" the prizes which the University bestows," and their " number" the mea- 
sure of academical encouragement. This is wholly fallacious ; and for these 
reasons : — 1°, The prizes, afford they what encouragement they may, are not 
founded, cannot be withheld, and therefore are not, in propriety, bestowed, 
by the University, that is by its dominant body, at all. They are the acci- 
dental bequests of individuals, in favour of certain favourite pursuits, (it may 
be) of certain personal crotchets. 2°, Their number is insignificant, and a 
large minority given to, or not without, mathematical eminence. 3°, Their 
pecuniary value is small, and, in this respect, the highest are the mathema- 
cal. 4°, The competition is principally for those mathematical, as to them the 
highest honour and the surest advantages are attached 5°, But to these inade- 
quate marks of distinction, which the University really does not bestow, and 
for which, be it for good or ill, it is, in fact, not responsible, Dr Whewell 
would not only himself limit, but would compel me to limit, the encourage- 
ment which Cambridge extends to the several branches of education. Mar- 
vellous to say ! he wholly overpasses the one encouragement, in comparison 
to which all others fade out of view ; I mean the Tripos, that is, as he him- 
self defines it, " theiist of the names of those to whom the University assigns 
honourable distinction after a public trial," and this in the order of merit. 

It will not be denied that this is the standard, according to which in Cam- 
bridge (and be it spoken to the credit of the place,) appointments in Univer- 
sity and College are usually determined. The Tripos, and not the Prizes, is 
therefore the measure by which principally if not exclusively is to be gaged 
the amount of encouragement, — the quantum of honour and advantage, 
bestowed in Cambridge on the several academical studies. This being pre- 
mised, the following facts cannot be denied. — 1°, That for near a century, to 
go no higher, (from 1739 to 1824) there was no Tripos list, that is, no public 
honour, except for mathematical distinction. — 2°, That during that time, and 



320 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS—NOTE. 

(6) We objected not to the works in which mathematics are 
studied in Cambridge ; but to the disproportioned encouragement 
which that university accords to the study of mathematics alto- 
gether ; and we argued for the restoration of philosophy proper, to 
its old and legitimate pre-eminence, and not for the introduction 
of any particular books in which that philosophy may be best pre- 
sented. This may form the subject of ulterior discussion. But 
we shall certainly not perplex the present question, by a compliance 
with. Mr Whewell's misplaced request.* 

down to 1830, (when u the Previous Examination " with its sorry minimum 
began,) no qualification whatsoever, beside a certain mathematical competence, 
was requisite for a degree ; the University of Cambridge according its certi- 
ficate of proficiency in the seven liberal arts to every illiterate barbarian who 
went up even for the lowest of its three classes of mathematical honours : and 
as such degree was a passport into holy orders, this "Venerable School" 
was allowed, for generations, to deluge the Church of England with a clergy 
void even of one ascertained qualification for their sacred calling. So far, 
though all our British Universities are in various respects absurd, the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, in this absurdity, may rank supreme. — 3°, That when, 
in 1824, the Classical Tripos commenced, though no classical proficiency was 
required from the competitor for mathematical honours, a mathematical 
honour was required as a preliminary from all who would compete for clas- 
sical distinction. Thus, encouragement to classical study was only allowed 
as an additional stimulus to mathematical ; and accordingly, if I had asserted, 
as I did not, that the University of Cambridge bestowed an exclusive encou- 
ragement on the latter study, I should not perhaps have asserted more than 
what any one was warranted to do. (Of the recent changes in the academical 
system of Cambridge it would be here out of place to say anything. But see 
Appendix, TIL) — Whether then, is Dr Whewell's statement or mine, — " not 
only unfounded, but inexcusably so " ? 

* [Referring to this paragraph, Dr Whewell (in his book on the Principles 
of English University Education, p. 2) says : — " There is another controversy, 
to which some part of the following pages may appear to have reference ; — 
the question of the comparative value of Mathematics, and of certain other 
studies which have been termed Philosophy, as instruments of education. 
An Edinburgh Reviewer, in a criticism upon a former publication of mine, 
maintained that the study of mathematics is, for such a purpose, useless or 
prejudicial; and recommended the cultivation of 'philosophy' in its place. 
In a letter to the Editor of the Review, (which I published,) I expressed my 
willingness to discuss the subject at a future time ; and, referring to the ma- 
thematical course of this University, as ray example of mathematical educa- 
tion, I requested to be informed, by description, or by reference to books, 
what that 'philosophy' was, which the Reviewer was prepared to contend 
for, as a better kind of education. I considered this as a proceeding, in the 
courtesy of literary combat, equivalent to sending my opponent the measure 
of my weapon, and begging to be furnished with the dimensions of his. 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHE WELL'S LETTER, ETC. 321 

(7) Our objections and those of the authorities which we 
adduced, are directed against [the excessive study of] the mathe- 

When, therefore, the reviewer, in reply, flatly refused ' to perplex the ques- 
tion by a compliance with Mr Whewell's misplaced request,' I certainly con- 
sidered myself as freed from any call to continue the controversy. No 
adherent of the reviewer could expect me to refute a proposition which the 
author himself did not venture to enunciate in an intelligible form. And, 
therefore, in the present book, I do not at all profess to discuss the question 
of the value of mathematics, and other kinds of philosophy, with reference to 
the reviewer's assertion, but simply so far as it is brought before me by the 
general course of my reflections." 

On this I must be permitted to observe, that Dr Whewell represents me 
as saying what, in fact, is a reversal of my real expression. For I did 
not "flatly refuse'''' to state what I thought were the particular books 
in which philosophy might be most profitably studied, I merely adjourned it 
to its proper season. " This," I said, " may form the subject of ulterior dis- 
cussion." I did not, as Dr Whewell quotes me, " refuse ' to perplex the 
question? " &c, but " to perplex the present question," &c. This is what I 
actually said. 

In this proceeding I was fully persuaded of its propriety. The question 
on which I had engaged was, the utility of mathematical study, in general, in 
any form, in any books, as a liberal exercise of mind; and this question 
behoved to be disposed of, before entering on another, — and another which 
only emerged, and that too subordinately, after the primary and principal 
problem had been decided. On this problem, I was firmly convinced that 
Dr Whewell could allege nothing solid in favour of mathematical study, to 
the extent in which it is fostered or forced in Cambridge ; for to that extent, 
I knew that nothing solid ever had been, nor I believed ever could be, 
alleged in favour of mathematical study. Was I therefore to descend from 
this impregnable position, where I stood secure, and of which I believed, 
(the event has justified the anticipation,) that Dr Whewell was too prudent 
to attempt the assault? — Counter arguments, worthy of consideration, there 
are none ; and as to authorities of any cogency, there is only the autho- 
rity of the University of- Cambridge itself. And of what value is that ? It 
is not, in fact, the University of Cambridge, in propriety, which can be 
alleged as such authority ; that is, the University organised by statute. It is 
only a private and intrusive interest which has there superseded the public 
seminary, and this has calculated for the advantage of its members, and not 
for the national good, the education which Cambridge has long been permitted 
to dispense. This private interest is that of the Colleges and of their Tutors ; 
and in Cambridge there has for generations been taught, not what the ends 
of education, not what the ends of science, prescribe, but only what and how 
the College Tutors are capable of teaching. It would be here out of place 
(and is indeed done elsewhere) to explain how a mere tutorial instruction 
must be scanty and mechanical, and how the mechanism once made up, 
remains, and must remain, long after the opinions which it chances to com- 
prehend and teach are elsewhere exploded. Suffice it for an example, that 

x 



322 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS-NOTE. 

matical sciences in general. Mathematics can be applied to objects 
of experience only in so far as these are mensurable ; that is, in 

fifty, that sixty years after Newton had published his Principia, the physical 
hypotheses of Descartes were still tutorially inculcated in Newton's own Uni- 
versity : in fact, I believe, that the Cambridge Colleges were about the last 
seminaries throughout Europe in which the Newtonian doctrine superseded 
the Cartesian ; and this too in opposition to the Professorial authority of 
Newton himself, and his successors in the public chair. And why ? Simply 
because in these colleges instruction was dispensed by tutors, for their own 
convenience and advantage ; and these tutors, educated in the older system, 
were unable or unwilling to re-educate themselves for teachers of the new. 
This is an example of the value of Collegial, of Tutorial, authority in Cam- 
bridge ; and we may be sure, that whatever are the subjects comprised in 
the tutorial mechanism of the time, will be clamorously asserted by the col- 
legial interest to be the best possible subjects of academical education ; while 
all beyond it, all especially that cannot be reduced to a catechetical routine, 
will be as clamorously decried. Even the noble and invigorating study of 
ancient literature may be reduced to a comparatively barren and unimprov- 
ing exercise of the lower faculties alone. But on this matter I am happy 
to agree with Dr Whewell ; and nothing certainly can be more deserved 
than his censure of the Cambridge tutorial methods of classical reading 
and examination. 

But the notion of Dr Whewell, that because the Cambridge text books on 
mathematics are " well known," (though, if I knew, I never once referred to 
any,) therefore, that I was bound, and hoc statu, to specify the book or books 
on philosophy which I would recommend in their room ; — this notion is not 
merely preposterous. For — 

1°. In mathematics there is no difference of opinion about mathematical 
truth ; all mathematical books are all true ; and the only difference of better 
and worse, between one mathematical book and another is, that this presents 
the common truths under an easier form than that, exacting, therefore, from 
the student a less amount of intellectual effort. The best mathematical 
treatise thus constitutes, pro tanto, in itself, the worst instrument of educa- 
tion. For — 

2°. The highest end of education is not to dictate truths, but to stimulate 
exertion ; since the mind is not invigorated, developed, in a word, educated, 
by the mere possession of truths, but by the energy determined in their quest 
and contemplation. But — 

3°. This is better done by any work on philosophy which stimulates to 
strong and independent (be it even for the time erroneous) speculation, than 
by the best work in mathematics which delivers truth but does not excite 
thought. Mathematical contrasted with philosophical truths, are, indeed, 
comparatively uninteresting, comparatively worthless; but they are more 
certain. I admit, indeed, now, as I have done before: — "Mathematics, 
from the first, have been triumphant over the husk ; Philosophy is still mili- 
tant for the kernel." But what is this to the question — Which study best 
cultivates the mind .?] 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHEWELL'S LETTER, ETC. 323 

so far as they come, or are supposed to come, under the categories 
of extension and number. Applied mathematics are, therefore, 
equally limited and equally unimproving as pure. The sciences, 
indeed, with which mathematics are thus associated, may afford a 
more profitable exercise of mind ; but this is only in so far as they 
supply the matter of observation, and of probable reasoning, and 
therefore, before this matter is hypothetically subjected to mathe- 
matical demonstration or calculus. Were there in the physical 
sciences, as Mr Whewell supposes, other grounds of necessary 
truth than the intuitions of Space and Time, the demonstrations 
deduced from these would be equally monotonous, equally easy, 
and equally unimproving, as the mathematical. But, that Mr 
Whewell confounds empirical with pure knowledge, is shown by 
the very example which he adduces at p. 33 of his pamphlet. 
The solution of that requires nothing but experience and the 
logical analysis of thought.* 

* [Referring to this paragraph, Dr Whewell (Preface to the fifth edition 
of his Mechanics, p. vi.) says : — " Some persons appear to doubt whether 
there are, in the physical sciences, other grounds of necessary truth than the 
intuitions of space and time. We might demand of such persons whether 
the properties of the pressures which balance each other on the lever, as 
proved by Archimedes, be not necessary truths ? whether our conceptions of 
pressures, and the properties of pressures, are modifications of our concep- 
tions of space and time ? and if they are not, whether necessary truths con- 
cerning pressures must not have some other ground than the Axioms of 
Geometry and Number? We might ask them whether we do not, in fact, in 
works like this, show that there are such other grounds, by actually enun- 
ciating them ? whether the Axiom, that the pressure on the fulcrum is equal 
to the sum of the weights, be not self-evident, and therefore necessary? 

" If it be said, that the establishment of such propositions as this ' requires 
nothing but experience and the logical analysis of thought,' we cannot help 
replying, that such a remark seems to betray confusion of thought and igno- 
rance of the subject. For it would appear as if the author denied the cha- 
racter of necessary truth to such principles because they depend only on 
experience and analysis ; and that if, besides these, they depended upon 
some additional grounds, he would allow them to be necessary. Again, it 
is clear that, in fact, such propositions do not depend at all upon experience ; 
for, as has elsewhere been urged, — ' Who supposes that Archimedes thought 
it necessary to verify this result by actual trial ? Or if he had done so, by 
what more evident principle could he have tested the equality of the 
weights?' (Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics, &c. p. 33.) And if 
such propositions depend upon logical analysis only, how can they be other- 
wise than necessary? Does the objector hold that truths which resolve 
themselves into logical analysis, are empirical truths ? 

" I conceive, therefore, that the cultivation of such a subject as this may be 



324 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

of great use both to the Students of this University and to other persons, 
not only in familiarizing them with the character of necessary truths, and 
the processes of reasoning by which a system of such truths is built up ; but 
also by shewing that such truths are not confined to the domain of space and 
number merely." 

Here the tables are completely turned. — I had objected to mathematical 
study, — that, if too exclusively pursued, it tended to induce a habit of con- 
fused thinking; but " confusion of thought and ignorance of the subject" 
are here objected to the objector. This stroke is bold, but dangerous. If 
not successful, it is suicidal ; for it challenges retort, and should the missile 
from Dr Whewell fall harmless, it may be returned with even fatal effect. 

Dr Whewell, by position, is the first man in the first college, as by repu- 
tation, he is the ablest functionary, of Cambridge. In that mathematical 
university he stands the foremost mathematician; but there, he likewise 
rises pre-eminent, out of mathematics, as a philosopher. Cambridge and 
mathematics could not, therefore, be more favourably represented. In these 
circumstances, if Dr Whewell, accusing others, be himself, and from the 
very terms of his accusation, proved guilty of his own charge ; how virulent, 
how permanently deleterious, must be the effect of mathematical study, 
when a naturally vigorous intellect could not resist, when other and invigorat- 
ing studies could not counteract, the mathematical alacrity to confusion of 
thought, even during the brief act of preferring that reproach itself, and 
with reference likewise to a favourite science ? But so it is. For to establish 
the fact, it is unnecessary to look beyond the previous extract ; which, both 
in the ground of charge itself, and in the statements by which that charge is 
accompanied, supplies abundant evidence of confused and inadequate think- 
ing- 

Dr Whewell here, as in his "Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics," 
repeatedly propounds it, as " a self-evident, and therefore necessary" propo- 
sition, — as an " Axiom;" that " the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the 
sum of the weights." But to common sense and unconfused consciousness 
this proposition is nothing of the kind ; it is not self-evident, it is not neces- 
sary, it is not an axiom, for it is not true. The pressure on the fulcrum is 
equal to the sum of the weights, plus the weight of the lever; in other words, 
it is equal to the weight of the system. Of course, no one knows this better 
than Dr Whewell, but having ideally abstracted from the weight of the lever, 
he inadvertently advanced, in his popular pamphlet, without warning or 
explanation, a statement which, to popular apprehension, is manifestly false. 
There are other parts of this extract which I for one do not pretend to 
understand,— without at least supplying what the author has omitted ; but 
let that pass. 

Having so indistinctly expressed himself, I cannot wonder that Dr 
Whewell has so completely misconceived me ;— supposing, as he does, that I 
could possibly hold propositions to be empirical, to be not necessary, in so 
far as these are applications of the canons of Logic. What I said, and clearly 
said, was this : — that the proposition in question (waving all inadequacy of 
expression) is no axiom, is no principle, because a derivative judgment, 
derived too from a double source; 1°, derived from the exercise of expe- 
rience ; 2°, derived from the laws of thought. This was said, in saying, that 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHEWELL'S LETTER, ETC. 325 

Dr Whewell's pretended axiom " requires nothing for its solution but expe- 
rience and the logical analysis of thought." And that it is derived, and 
derived from these two sources, I now proceed to establish. 

1°. It is derived from experience. — Dr Whewell asserts, " that such propo- 
sitions do not depend at all upon experience." On the contrary, I maintain 
that all propositions which involve the notion of gravitation, weight, pres- 
sure, presuppose experience ; for by experience alone do we become aware, 
that there is such a quale and quantum in the universe. To think it existent, 
there is no necessity of thought ; for we can easily in thought conceive the 
particles of matter, indifferent to each other, nay, endowed with a mutually 
repulsive, instead of a mutually attractive force. We can even, in thought, 
annihilate matter itself. So far the asserted axiom is merely a derived, and 
that too merely an empirical, proposition. — But, moreover, not only are we 
dependent on experience, for the fact of the existence of gravitation, &c, we 
are also indebted to observation for the further facts of the uniform and con- 
tinuous operation of that force ; and thus, in a second potence, are all such 
propositions dependent upon experience. — In sum : We cannot think this and 
such like propositions, without founding doubly upon experience. — Dr Whew- 
ell indeed observes, in addition to what has been extracted : — " If it be 
said, that we cannot possess the ideas of pressure and mechanical action 
without the use of our senses, and that this is experience ; it is sufficient to 
reply, that the same may be said of the ideas of relations in space ; and 
that thus Geometry depends upon experience in this sense, no less than 
Mechanics." (lb. p. viii.) — This is, however, only another instance, in him, 
of the " confusion of thought and ignorance of the subject," which he imputes 
to me. " The ideas of relations in space," and M the ideas of pressure," &c. 
differ obtrusively in this : — that we can in thought easily annul pressure, 
all the properties of matter, and even matter itself ; but are wholly unable 
to think away space and its relations. The latter are conditions, the former 
are educts, of experience ; and it is this difference of their object-matters 
which constitutes Geometry a pure or a priori, and Mechanics an empirical 
or a posteriori, science. 

I now proceed to the second head of reduction. 

2°, It is derived from the logical analysis of thought. — Under this head my 
objection to Dr Whewell's " Axiom " is, that it is merely a predication of a 
thing of itself, a mistaken commutation of the analytical principle of identity 
in logic with a synthetical principle of some non-identity in mechanics. This 
pretended axiom is, in fact, nothing more than the tautological judgment, 
u that the whole is equal to all its parts ;" the confusion being occasioned 
and veiled by different words being employed to denote the same thing. 
These different words are weight and pressure. But weight and pressure are 
(here) only various terms for the same force. What weighs, pro tanto, is 
supposed to press ; what presses, pro tanto, is supposed to weigh. The pres- 
sure on the fulcrum — is thus only another phrase for — the weight on the ful- 
crum ; and to say, with Dr Whewell, that " the pressure on the fulcrum is 
equal to the sum of the weights," this (waving always the inaccuracy) is only 
tantamount to saying, — either, that the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to 
the sum of the pressures on the lever, — or, that the weight on the fulcrum is 
equal to the sum of the weights on the lever. It consequently requires, as I 



326 • STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

said, only a logical analysis of the enouncement that " the whole is equal to 
all its parts, therefore, to its two halves," &c., to obtain the idle proposition 
which Dr Whewell has dignified by the name of— Axiom in Mechanics. 

Dr Whewell's error from " confusion of thought," in this instance, is akin 
to a mistake which I have elsewhere found it necessary to expound, (Disser- 
tations on Reid, p. 853) ; — I mean his attempted " Demonstration," (from a 
supposed law of thought,) " that all matter is heavy." 

But, — I had almost forgotten, — what shall we say of Archimedes ? u The 
Axiom " is apparently fathered upon him ; he was a great mathematical 
inventor ; and it is maintained above (p. 283, sq.) that mathematical inven- 
tion and philosophical genius (in which are necessarily comprehended distinct 
and perspicuous thinking) coincide. I was certain, before re-examining the 
treatise on ^Equiponderants by Archimedes, that it could contain no such 
principle, no such truism ; nor does it. 

The reader is now in a condition to decide : — Whether the charge of 
" confusion of thought and ignorance of the subject" weigh on the accuser or 
on the accused ; and, in general, Whether " Mathematics be a means of form- 
ing logical habits better than Logic itself'' 

But before concluding, I am tempted to give one other specimen of " the 
confusion of thought" in Dr Whewell's reasoning, and of the manner in 
which (telumque imbelle sine ictu,) his u Mathematical Logic" is brought 
to bear against my arguments. — " I shall not pursue," says he, " the consi- 
deration of the beneficial intellectual influence of Mathematical studies. It 
would be easy to point out circumstances, which show that this influence 
has really operated ; — for instance, the extraordinary number of persons, 
who, after giving more than common attention to mathematical studies at 
the University, have afterwards become eminent as English lawyers." (Eng- 
lish University Education, p. 14.) — The fact of the consecution I do not 
doubt. But if Dr Whewell had studied logic, as he has studied mathema- 
tics, he would not have confounded an antecedent with a cause, a consequent 
with an effect. There is a sophism against which logic, the discipline of 
unconfused thinking, puts us on our guard, and which is technically called 
the " Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Of this fallacy Dr Whewell is, in this his 
one selected instance, guilty. And how ? English law has less of principle, 
and more of detail, than any other national jurisprudence. Its theory can 
be conquered, not by force of intellect alone ; and success in its practice 
requires, with a strong memory, a capacity of the most continuous, of the 
most irksome application. Now mathematical study requires this like- 
wise ; it therefore tests, no doubt, to this extent, '* the bottom " of the 
student. But because a great English Lawyer has been a Cambridge 
wrangler, it is a curious logic to maintain, that mathematical study co?iduccs 
to legal proficiency. The Cambridge honour only shows, that a man has in 
him, by nature, one condition of a good English lawyer. And we might as 
well allege, in trying the blood of a terrier puppy, by holding him up from 
ear or paw, that the suspension itself was the cause of his proving " of the 
right sort ; " as that mathematical study bestowed his power of dogged 
application, far less his power of legal logic, on the future counsellor. For 
one man of genuine talent and accomplishment, who has sacrificed to the 
Molech of Cambridge idolatry, how many illiterate incapables do the lists of 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR WHE WELL'S LETTER, ETC. 327 

mathematical Wranglers exhibit ? How many noble minds has a forced 
application to mathematical study reduced to idiocy or madness? How 
many generous victims (they " died and made no sign,") have perished, and 
been forgotten, in or after the pursuit of a mathematical Honour? This 
melancholy observation is familiarly made in Cambridge itself.* Again, do 
" Mathematics form logical habits better than Logic itself?" As the ele- 
gant Lagomarsini (" vir melioris Latinitatis peritissimus," to use the words 
of Ruhnkenius), in his oration on the Grammar Schools of Italy, said in 
reference to an English criticism : — " Hoc tan turn dicam ; tunc me aequo 
aniino de re latina praecipientes, Italorumque in ea tractanda rationem repre- 
hendentes, Britannos homines auditurum, quum aliquid vere latinum (quod 
jamdiu desideramus) ab se elaboratum ad nos ex illo Oceano suo miserint : " 
so for us, it will be time enough to listen to any Cambridge disparagement 
of non-mathematical logic, when a bit of reasoning has issued from that 
University, in praise of mathematical logic, not itself in violation of all 
logical law, — for such, as yet, certainly, has not been vouchsafed. In fact 
we need look no farther than the Cambridge panegyrics themselves of mathe- 
matical study, to see how illogical are the habits which a too exclusive pur- 
suit of that study fosters. — But in conclusion, Dr Whewell also says : — " I 
have already noticed how well the training of the college appears to prepare 
men to become good lawyers. I will add, that I conceive cm- physicians to 
be the first in the world," &c. (lb. p. 51,) In so far as Cambridge is con- 
cerned, I should be glad if Dr Whewell had specified these paragons, who 
with merit so transcendent, hide their talent under a bushel ; for of their 
names, discoveries and reputations, I profess myself wholly ignorant, and 
suspect that the world is not better informed, touching those who are its 
" first physicians." But this fact, is it not on a level with the previous rea- 
soning ?] 



* With others, above, and especially the two testimonies from the Quar- 
terly Review (pp. 309, 310,) see the Cambridge pamphlet lately published 
by a " Member of the Senate," entitled " The Next Step," (p. 43). The 
author, likewise, refers to a pamphlet (which I have not seen) by Mr Blakes- 
ley, for a corresponding statement. 



II.-ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL 
LEARNING. 

WITH RELATION TO THE DEFENCE OF CLASSICAL 
INSTRUCTION BY PROFESSOR PILLANS. 



(October, 1836.) 

Three Lectures on the Proper Objects and Methods of Education 
in reference to the different Orders of Society ; and on the rela- 
tive Utility of Classical Instruction. Delivered in the University 
of Edinburgh, November, 1835. By James Pjllans, M.A., 
F.R.S.E., Professor of Humanity in that University. 8vo. 
Edinburgh: 1836. 

We regret that circumstances prevented our noticing these dis- 
courses in either of our last Numbers. They are a good word spoken 
in due season ; and sure we are, that it will not be spoken in vain, 
if our Scottish countrymen are not wholly disabled from appre- 
ciating at their real value, this vindication of classical studies, and 
the objections by which they have been here recently assailed. 
It would, however, be a disparagement of these lectures to view 
them as only of temporary and local value ; far less, as merely an 
answer to what all entitled to an opinion on the matter must view 
as undeserving of refutation or notice — on its own account. They 
form, in fact, a valuable contribution to the philosophy of educa- 
tion ; and, in particular, one of the ablest expositions we possess 
of the importance of philological studies in the higher cultivation 
of the mind. As an occasional publication, the answer doe* too 
much honour to the attack. Indeed, the only melancholy mani- 
festation in the opposition now raised to the established course of 
classical instruction, is not the fact of such opposition; but thai 



SCOTLAND DEFECTIVE IN CLASSICAL LEARNING. 329 

arguments in themselves so futile, — arguments which, in other 
countries, would have been treated only with neglect, should in 
Scotland not have been wholly harmless. If such attacks have 
had their influence on the public mind, this affords only another 
proof, not that ancient literature is with us studied too much, but 
that it is studied far too little. Where classical learning has been 
vigorously cultivated, the most powerful attacks have only ended 
in the purification and improvement of its study. In Germany 
and Holland, in Italy, and even in France, objections, not unrea- 
sonably, have been made to an exclusive and indiscriminate clas- 
sical education ; but the experimental changes they determined, 
have only shown in their result : that ancient literature may be 
more effectually cultivated in the school, if not cultivated alone ; 
and that whilst its study, if properly directed, is, absolutely, the 
best mean towards an harmonious development of the faculties, — 
the one end of all liberal education ; yet, that this mean is not 
always, relatively, the best, when circumstances do not allow of 
its full and adequate application. 

It is natural that men should be inclined to soothe their vanity 
with the belief, that what they do not themselves know is not 
worth knowing ; and that they should find it easy to convert 
others, who are equally ignorant, to the same opinion, is what 
might also confidently be presumed. " Ce n'est pas merveille, si 
ceux qui n'ont jamais mange de bonnes choses, ne scavent que 
c'est de bonnes viandes." On this principle, Scotland is the 
country of all others in which every disparagement of classical 
learning might be expected to be least unsuccessful. For it is the 
country where, from an accumulation of circumstances, the public 
mind has been long most feebly applied to the study of antiquity, 
and where it is daily more and more diverted to other depart- 
ments of knowledge. A summary indication of the more impor- 
tant of these circumstances may suffice to show, that the neglect 
of classical learning in Scotland is owing, neither to the inferior 
value of that learning in itself, nor to any want of capacity in our 
countrymen for its cultivation. 

There are two principal conditions of the prosperity of classical 
studies in a country. The one, — the necessity there imposed of a 
classical training for the three learned professions; the other, — 
the efficiency of its public schools and universities in the promotion 
of classical erudition. These two conditions, it is evident, sever- 
ally infer each other. For. on the one hand, where a certain 



330 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

amount and quality of learning is requisite for the successful cul- 
tivation of the Law, Medicine, and Divinity of a country, this of 
itself necessitates the existence of Schools and Universities com- 
petent to its supply ; and on the other, where an efficient system 
of classical education has become general, there the three profes- 
sions naturally assume a more learned character, and demand a 
higher complement of erudition from their members. The pro- 
sperity of ancient learning is every where found dependent on 
these conditions ; and these conditions are always found in har- 
mony with each other. To explain the rise and decline of clas- 
sical studies in different nations and periods, is therefore only to 
trace the circumstances which have in these modified the learned 
character of the professions, and the efficiency and application of 
the great public seminaries. 

It would be foolish to imagine that the study of antiquity can 
ever of itself secure an adequate cultivation. How pleasant and 
wholesome soever are its fruits, they can only be enjoyed by those 
who have already fed upon its bitter roots. The higher and more 
peculiar its ultimate advantages and pleasures, — the more it edu- 
cates to capacities of thought and feeling, which we should never 
otherwise have been taught to know or to exert, — and the more 
that what it accomplishes can be accomplished by it alone, — the 
less can those who have had no experience of its benefits ever con- 
ceive, far less estimate their importance. Other studies of more 
immediate profit and attraction will divert from it the great mass 
of applicable talent. Without external encouragement to classical 
pursuits, there can be no classical public in a country, there can 
be no brotherhood of scholars to excite, to appreciate, to applaud, 
ovfAQiKtikoyih xul avuivdovaix^siu. The extensive diffusion of learning 
in a nation is even a requisite of its intensive cultivation. Num- 
bers are the condition of an active emulation ; for without a rivalry 
of many vigorous competitors there is little honour in the contest, 
and the standard of excellence will be ever low. For a few hold- 
ers of the plough there are many prickers of the oxen ; and a 
score of Barneses are required as the possibility of a single Bent ley. 

In accounting, therefore, for the low state of classical erudition 
in Scotland, we shall, in the first place, indicate the causes why in 
this country an inferior amount of ancient learning has been long 
found sufficient for its Law, Medicine, and Divinity ; and, in the 
second, explain how our Scottish Schools and Universities are so 
ill adapted for tlio promotion of that learning. 



LAW, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 331 

I. The Professions. — Law can be only viewed as conducive to 
the cause of classical erudition, in so far as (what in most coun- 
tries is the case) it renders necessary a knowledge of the Roman 
jurisprudence ; the necessity of such a knowledge being, in fact, 
tantamount to a necessity for the cultivation of Latin history and 
literature. For while the Roman law affords the example of a 
completer and more self-connected system than the jurisprudence 
of any modern nation can exhibit ; without a minute and compre- 
hensive knowledge of that system in its relations and totality, its 
principles can neither be correctly understood, nor its conclusions 
with any certainty applied. This, however, is impossible, with- 
out a philological knowledge of the language in which this law is 
written, and an historical knowledge of the circumstances under 
which it was gradually developed. On the other hand, an ac- 
quaintance with the Roman jurisprudence has been always 
viewed as indispensable for the illustration of Latin philology 
and antiquities ; insomuch, that in most countries of Europe, 
ancient literature and the Roman law have prospered or declined 
together : the most successful cultivators of either department 
have indeed been almost uniformly cultivators of both. — In Italy, 
Roman law and ancient literature revived together ; and Alciatus 
was not vainer of his Latin poetry, than Politian of his interpre- 
tation of the Pandects. — In France, the critical study of the 
Roman jurisprudence was opened by Budaeus, who died the most 
accomplished Grecian of his age ; and in the following generation, 
Cujacius and Joseph Scaliger were only the leaders of an illustri- 
ous band, who combined, in almost equal proportions, law with 
literature, and literature with law. — To Holland the two studies 
migrated in company ; and the high and permanent prosperity of 
the Dutch schools of jurisprudence has been at once the effect and 
the cause of the long celebrity of the Dutch schools of classical 
philology. — In Germany, the great scholars and civilians, who 
illustrated the sixteenth century, disappeared together ; and with 
a few partial exceptions, they were not replaced until the middle 
of the eighteenth, when the kindred studies began, and have con- 
tinued to flourish in reciprocal luxuriance. — Classical literature 
and Roman law owe less to the jurists of England than to those 
of any other country. The English common law is derived from 
sources which it requires no classical erudition to elucidate ; in no 
other nation, except our own, has jurisprudence been less liberally 
cultivated as a general science, — more exclusively as a special 



332 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

practice ; and though of some recognised authority in certain 
English Courts, so little has the civil law been made an object of 
professional study, that an English lawyer rarely hazards an allu- 
sion to the Imperial Collections, without betraying his ignorance 
of their very titles. Classical learning has, however, been always 
laudably cultivated in England, and English jurists have accord- 
ingly sometimes acquired, as scholars, a legal erudition, wholly 
superfluous in professional practice. [This peculiarity of the 
English jurisprudence is noticed and commented on by John 
Barclay in his Icon Animarum.~\ 

In Scotland the causes are different, although the result is 
nearly the same. In this kingdom the Roman jurisprudence 
formerly possessed a high, but always an indefinite, authority. 
It exerted a conspicuous influence on the genius and original 
development of the Scottish law ; where not controlled by statute 
or custom, its determinations were usually admitted as decisive ; 
and some of the most eminent of our jurists have even recognised 
it as the written law of Scotland. It was usual also, until a com- 
paratively recent period, for those educated for the Scottish bar 
to study the Roman law under the illustrious civilians of France 
or Holland ; and they returned from the continental universities, 
if not always profound scholars, more aware, at least, of the value 
of classical learning, and with a higher standard of classical at- 
tainment. Still, however, the authority of the Civil Law in Scot- 
land was never strong enough to constrain the profession to its 
profound and universal study ; and the necessity of resorting to 
foreign seminaries for the requisite education, showed that this 
could not adequately be procured at home. Among the myriads 
of works illustrative of Roman jurisprudence, we recollect not 
even one that has appeared in Scotland ; and the little that has 
been done in this department by Scotsmen was executed abroad, 
— the result of foreign training, stimulus, and example. The 
profession can lay no claim to what Cuningham proposed, — to 
what Scrymger and Henryson performed. But the authority of 
the Roman jurisprudence, and the consequent necessity of its 
study, was destined gradually to decline. The Scottish law be- 
came more and more reduced to statute ; and after the union of 
the kingdoms was constrained to gravitate with an ever increasing 
velocity towards the indigenous and anti-Roman jurisprudence of 
England. The knowledge of the Roman system became always 
rarer and less profound. The judges, perhaps prudently, began 



DIVINITY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 333 

to neglect an authority which was seldom adequately understood ; 
and in Scottish practice a quotation from the Pandects now savours 
rather of ostentation than of use. 

Medicine was formerly a profession which required a large 
amount of classical erudition ; and among the most illustrious 
scholars since the revival of letters, no inconsiderable number 
have been physicians. The practical importance of this learning 
in Scottish medicine has, however, been long gradually falling. 
Hippocrates and Galen are not now the authorities. Medical 
works are no longer written and read only in Latin ; nay, the late 
Dr Gregory (the " Ultimus Romanorum,") apologizes in his 
" Conspectus" for not abandoning a language which promised 
erelong to be unintelligible to his professional brethren. The 
future physician does not now resort to the classical schools of 
Ley den and Padua ; and in the universities of Scotland, the lan- 
guage of the learned has been dispensed with, not only in medical 
lectures, but in medical examination. [In the chief of these, literary 
qualification is indeed tested only by the professional teachers ; 
while the proportion of graduates has risen as the number of stu- 
dents has fallen off : so that a Scottish degree in medicine is now 
a valid guarantee of no higher classical accomplishment, than the 
licence from a Surgical College or certificate from Apothecaries' 
Hall. But was it for this, that the privilege is entrusted to a 
University of conferring the " Summi in Medicina Honores " ?] 

Theology, however, far more than either Law or Medicine, 
affords an effectual support to classical studies ; for Christian, and, 
more especially, Protestant theology is little else than an applied 
philology and criticism ; of which the basis is a profound know- 
ledge of the languages and history of the ancient world. To be 
a competent divine is, in fact, to be a scholar. 

Christianity is founded upon Miracles ; but these miracles are 
not continued, and the proof of their original occurrence is con- 
sequently left to human learning as a matter of historical evidence. 
— Again, Revelation, under either dispensation, was made through 
writers divinely authorized and inspired. But in some cases it 
is doubted, whether certain of these writers have been actually 
inspired ; and in others, whether the works purporting to have 
been written by them are actually theirs. This necessitates pro- 
found researches in regard to the authors of the several writings, 
— to the time when, — to the circumstances under which, — to the 
place where, — and to the persons for whom, they were first writ- 



334 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

ten. It behoves, to discover all that is known or not known 
touching the first publication of these writings, — what is histori- 
cally certain or probable as to their original recognition, and 
annexation to the general collection of inspired writings, — and, in 
fine, all that is known of the fate, of the contradiction it encoun- 
tered, and of the changes which this collection or Canon may- 
have undergone. 

The vehicle of revelation is Writing; and no miracle was 
vouchsafed to preserve the sacred documents from the fate of 
other ancient manuscripts, or to prevent the omissions, changes, 
and interpolations of careless or perfidious transcribers, through 
the period of fourteen centuries. This was left to the resources 
of human Criticism ; and the task requires for its accomplishment 
the profoundest scholarship. The collation of the most ancient 
manuscripts, the discrimination of their families, and a comparison 
of the oldest versions may afford certain valuable criteria; but 
the one paramount and indispensable condition for the determina- 
tion of the genuine reading, is a familiar acquaintance with the 
spirit of the languages in which the sacred volume is written. 

Interpretation, therefore, is not only the most extensive and 
arduous, but the most important function of the theologian ; — that 
is, an inquiry into the sense of the inspired writings, and an 
exposition of the truths which they contain. — To speak only of 
the New Testament. God did not select for his apostles the elo- 
quent and the learned. It is, therefore, necessary to evolve the 
sense from the phraseology of unlearned men, writing also in a 
language not their own. At the same time, the circumstances 
which determined the associations and course of thought, and 
consequently explain the meaning of the authors, are to be dis- 
covered only through a knowledge of the literature to which the 
writings belong, — of the age in which they appeared, — of the 
particular public whom they addressed, — and of the circumstances 
under which they were produced. Add to this, that the original 
language, though Hellenistic Greek, is yet in a great part imme- 
diately, and in a still greater, mediately, translated from the 
Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaean ; and it is universally admitted by 
the learned, that without a knowledge of the various Semitic 
dialects, it is impossible to enter thoroughly into that peculiar 
character of thought and expression, which is necessary to be 
understood, to understand the real import of the vehicle in which 
revelation is conveyed. The interpretation of the sacred books 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 335 

thus supposes a profound and extensive knowledge of the lan- 
guages of antiquity, not merely in their words, but in their spirit ; 
and an intimate familiarity with the historical circumstances of 
the period, which can only be acquired through a comprehensive 
study of the contemporary authors. 

It is thus evident, on the one hand, that no country can possess 
a theology without also possessing a philological erudition ; and 
on the other, that if it possess a philological erudition, it possesses 
the one necessary condition of a theology. Now, for nearly two 
centuries, Scotland, compared with other countries, may be broadly 
said to have been without a theology ; but as no other country has 
been more strongly actuated by religious interests, it cannot be 
supposed that its clergy held in their hands the condition of a 
theology which (overlooking two qualified exceptions) has been 
never realised by any. What then are the peculiar circumstances 
which caused, or which allowed, the Scottish Church to remain so 
far behind all other national establishments in theological, and, 
consequently, in classical erudition 1 

In the first place, the Reformation in Scotland, and the consti- 
tution of the Scottish Church were not indigenous, — were not the 
conclusions of a native theology. In Scotland the new opinions 
were a communication from abroad. The polity and principles 
of the Scottish Church were borrowed, — borrowed from Calvin 
and Geneva ; and it was only one, and one of the least prominent, 
of the many Calvinist and Presbyterian Churches throughout 
Europe. At the same time, it was neither the creature nor the 
favourite of the Prince. The defence of that modification of Chris- 
tianity established in Scotland was thus no peculiar, no principal 
point of honour with the nation or the state ; and the Scottish 
clergy, geographically remote from the great centre of European 
polemic, were able, without manifest discredit, to devolve upon 
the kindred communions the vindication of their common polity 
and doctrine. — In this respect the English Church exhibits a 
striking contrast to the Scotch. The former stood alone among 
the Protestant communions. It was at once opposed to these and 
to the Church of Rome. It was the establishment of a great and 
prominent nation ; and the personal and political honour of the 
Monarch — the dispenser of its high distinctions and emoluments — 
was long deeply interested in its credit and support. The Church 
of England was thus, from its origin, in a relation of hostility to 
every other. Polemical it must be ; and in the general warfare 



336 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

which it waged, as it possessed the means, so it had every motive 
to reward, in its champions, the higher qualities of theological 
prowess. If the Church of England could dispense with a 
learned clergy, it could not dispense with a complement of 
learned divines. 

In the second place, the determination given to the Church of 
Scotland by those through whom it was established was not one 
of erudition. 

In Germany the Reformation proceeded from, and was princi- 
pally carried through by, the academical divines ; the princes, 
the cities, and the people only obeyed the impulsion first given 
and subsequently continued from the universities. In its origin 
the religious revolution was, in the empire, a learned revolution ; 
and every permanent modification, every important movement in 
its progress had some learned theologian for its author. From 
this character of the Reformation in Germany, the determination 
of religious dogmas was there naturally viewed as a privilege of 
erudition, — as more the function of the universities than of the 
church, the people, or the state. Religion consequently remained 
in the German schools a matter peculiarly proposed for learned 
investigation ; the authority of confessions was not long allowed 
to suspend the Protestant right of inquiry ; and the alarming 
freedom with which this right has been latterly exercised by the 
Lutheran divines, may be traced back to the license and example 
of Luther himself. In Germany, indeed, theology necessarily 
shared the fate of classical learning. The causes which, from the 
conclusion of the sixteenth century, depressed the latter, reduced 
the former to a shallow and barbarous polemic; and the revival 
of the study of antiquity, from the middle of the eighteenth, was 
principally the condition, and partly the consequence, of a revival 
of theological learning. 

In England the peculiar form under which the Reformation 
was established was principally determined by the royal will. 
But the very fact that the Church of England was neither in its 
origin the free creation of a learned theology, nor the spontane- 
ous choice of a persuaded people, only enhanced the necessity of 
a higher erudition to illustrate and to defend it when established. 
Besides standing, in Europe, opposed to every other establish- 
ment and communion, it was, in its own country, surrounded by a 
more powerful host of sectaries than any other national church ; — 
who, originally hostile to its polity and privileges, became, on its 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 337 

conversion from Calvinism, by Laud, the more deadly enemies 
of its doctrine. The difficulty and increasing danger of this 
position kept up an unceasing necessity for able and erudite 
defenders ; and as honours and riches were not stinted as the 
price, the supply of the commodity was hardly inferior to the 
demand. 

The Church of Scotland, on the contrary, was neither the off- 
spring of learning nor of power ; ' it was the choice of an unlearn- 
ed people, and after being long upheld by the nation in defiance 
of every effort of the government, it was finally established by a 
revolution. 

As the Scottish Reformation did not originate in native learn- 
ing, so it did not even come recommended to the Scottish people, 
by the learned authority of its propagators. In relation to other 
national Reformers, the Reformer of Scotland was an unlettered 
man. " Compared with Knox," says a great German historian, 
" Luther was but a timorous boy ; " — but if Knox surpassed Luther 
himself in intrepidity, even Luther was a learned theologian by 
the side of Knox. With the exception of Melville, who obtained 
what erudition he possessed abroad, the religion of the people of 
Scotland could boast of no theologian worthy of the name. Some 
remarkable divines indeed Scotland has possessed ; but these were 
all adherents of that church, which for a season was established by 
the will of the monarch in opposition to the wishes of the nation. 
The two Forbeses, to say nothing of Leighton, Burnet, and Sage, 
were Episcopalians. In fact the want of popular support made it 
necessary for the divines of that establishment to compensate by 
the strength of their theological learning for the weakness of their 
political position. The struggle which ensued between the Epis- 
copal and Presbyterian parties was, from first to last, more a 
popular than a scientific, — more a civil than a theological contest ; 
and the Covenanters, whose zeal and fortitude finally wrought 
out the establishment of the religion and liberty of the nation, 
were unlearned as they were enthusiastic. With the triumph of 
the Presbyterian polity and doctrines, the controversy between 
the rival persuasions ceased. The Scottish Episcopalians were 
few in numbers, and long politically repressed ; and the other 
separatists from the establishment, so far from being, as in Eng- 
land, the enemies of the dominant church, were in reality its use- 
ful friends. They pitched in general somewhat higher the prin- 
ciples which they held in common with the establishment ; and 

Y 



338 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

whereas in England the Dissenters would have radically destroyed 
what they condemned as vicious, in Scotland they wished only, 
as they in fact contributed, to brace what they viewed as relaxed. 
Thus, in Scotland, if sectarian controversy did not wholly cease, 
theological erudition was not required for its prosecution. The 
learning of the Dissenters did not put to shame the ignorance of 
the Establishment ; and the people were so well satisfied with their 
own triumph, and their adopted church, that its clergy had no 
call on them for erudition to illustrate what was already respected, 
or to vindicate what was not assailed.* Even the attacks on Chris- 
tianity which were subsequently made in Scotland, and which 
it was therefore more immediately incumbent on the Scottish 
clergy to repel, were not such as it required any theological eru- 
dition to meet ; while, from the religious dispositions of the pub- 
lic, these attacks remained always rather a scandal than a danger. 
At the same time, in no other country was there so little verge, 
far less encouragement, allowed to theological speculation. The 
standards of Scottish orthodoxy were more articulate and unam- 
biguous than those of any other church ; and to its members the 
permissible result of all inquiry was in proportion rigorously pre- 
determined. Though often ignorantly mistaken, often inten- 
tionally misunderstood, the national creed could not, as in other 
countries, by any section of the established clergy, be either pro- 
fessedly abandoned or openly attacked. In religious controversy, 
popular opinion remained always the supreme tribunal ; and a cla- 
mour, when this could be excited, was at once decisive of victory. 
At the same time the highest aim of clerical accomplishment was 
to preach a popular discourse. Under the former system of church 
patronage, this was always a principal condition of success ; under 

* [When yet comparatively learned, — before its secure establishment, ami 
the consequent slumber into which it was allowed to sink, the Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland, sensible of its deficiencies, sought, more especially from 
Holland, for theologians and scholars who might raise the fallen and falling 
standard of its aspirants to the ministry. This consciousness of self- defi- 
ciency is an honourable testimony to the older Church. Of these movements. 
I am aware of two, and of these I write merely from recollection. The one 
will be found in the records of an Assembly, during what has here been 
called u the Second Reformation ; " the other is recorded by C'alamy, in the 
memoirs of his own life, who mentions, that when a student in Holland he 
there met Carstairs, on a mission into that country to recruit for persons 
qualified to fill the chairs in the several Universities of Scotland. I low thi^ 
efibrt unfortunately failed, I am unable to state.] 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 339 

the present, it promises to be soon the only one.* Theological 
learning remained thus superfluous, if not unsafe. 

Nor, in the third place, must it be overlooked, that the laud- 
able accommodation of the Scottish Church to its essential end, 
— the religious instruction of the people, — secured it consideration 
and usefulness without any high attainment in theological science. 
This, indeed, it neither felt as necessary, nor possessed the means 
of encouraging. Ecclesiastical property was fairly applied to 
ecclesiastical purposes ; and the duties and salaries of the clergy 
were neither inadequately nor unequally apportioned. If the pro- 
fessional education of the churchman was defective, still it was 
better than none. If not learned, he was rarely incompetent to 
parochial duties, which he could not neglect ; while his religious 
and moral character were respectable and respected. The people 
of Scotland were justly contented with their Church. 

In the Church of England, on the contrary, the splendour of 
extraordinary learning was requisite to throw into the shade its 
manifold defects and abuses ; — its want of professional education, 
— its pluralities, — its sinecures, — its non-residence, — its princely 
pampering of the few, — its beggarly starvation of the many. The 
grosser the ignorance which it tolerated, the more distinguished 
must be the erudition which it encouraged ; and in the distribu- 
tion of its higher honours, the promotion of merit, in some cases, 
was even necessary to redeem the privilege of neglecting it in 
general. Thus the different circumstances of the two churches 
rendered the clergy of the one, neither ignorant nor learned; of 
the other, ignorant and learned at once. 

The circumstance, however, of most decisive influence on the 

* [This was written soon after the passing of what is called the Veto Act 
by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which declared, as 
ancient and indefeasible, the right of the people to refuse, without reasons, 
any pastor presented to them ; and before this Act had been pronounced, by 
the competent tribunals, illegal. Had the measure gone to compel an ade- 
quate education and trial of the clergy, — had it provided that none should 
assume the character of pastor who was not fully competent to pastoral 
duties,— and that each parish should obtain, among qualified candidates, the 
minister best suited to its reasonable wants ; — had it, in fact, abolished pri- 
vate patronage, — and declared as imperative, all that the national Church, 
in this, or any other Protestant state, had ever even sought to confer upon 
the people : in that case I, for one, should have wished it all success. But 
•] 



3-10 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

erudition of a clergy is the quality and amount of the prepara- 
tory and professional education they receive. As almost exclu- 
sively bred in the common schools and universities of a country, 
and their necessary course of education being in general con- 
siderably longer than that of the other learned professions, the 
clergy consequently express more fully and fairly than any other 
class the excellences and defects of the native seminaries. On 
the other hand, the quality and amount of their learning princi- 
pally determine for good or evil the character of the whole edu- 
cation, public and private, of a country ; for the clergy, or those 
trained for the church, constitute not only the most numerous 
body of literary men, but the class from which tutors, schoolmas- 
ters, and even professors, are principally taken. Their ignorance 
or erudition thus reacts most powerfully and extensively, either 
to raise and keep up learning, or to prevent its rising among all 
orders and professions. The standard of learning in a national 
clergy is, in fact, the standard of learning in a nation. 

This leads us to the second general condition of classical eru- 
dition. 

II. The system of Schools and Universities. — And in Scotland 
our higher and lower seminaries are, perhaps, worse calculated 
for the promotion of ancient learning than those of any other 
European country. 

No other country is so defective in the very foundation of a 
classical instruction, — the number and quality of Grammar Schools. 
England has its five hundred of these, publicly endowed: how 
many has Scotland ! The attempt to supply this want by 
making the parochial schoolmaster teach the elements of Latin, 
— Greek is out of the question, — proclaims but does not remedy 
the deficiency. If sometimes hardly competent to the work of 
primary education, this functionary is rarely qualified for a 
classical instructor. Yet to his incompetency has, in general, 
been abandoned the preparation of the future clergy and school- 
masters of the nation. It is, indeed, only of late years that a 
few grammar schools have ventured upon Greek ; the alphabet 
of which is, by country students at least, still usually acquired in 
the university. The universities were, indeed, obliged, changing 
their proper character, to stoop, in order to supply the absence 
or the incompetency of the inferior seminaries. To do this ade- 
quately was, in the circumstances, impossible. Professorial pre- 



SCOTTISH SEMINARIES, CLASSICALLY INCOMPETENT. 341 

lections are no substitute for scholastic discipline.* Prematurely 
matriculated, the student often completed his academical course 
of philology, before boys in other countries had finished school ; 
and, in his progress through the superior classes, he soon forgot 
the scantling of the languages which he had now no longer any 
occasion to employ. Even in the long course of academical 
instruction, to which the future churchman was astricted, a few 
trifling exercises of form are all, we believe, that render some 
knowledge of Latin a convenient accomplishment. — What, in fine, 
is the character of his professional examination ? It is peculiar 
to Scotland, that the candidate for holy orders is tried, not by 
one or a few responsible individuals, specially nominated for that 
purpose from superior erudition and ability ; but left to the low 
standard and fortuitous examination of all or any members of the 
Presbytery (clergy of a district) to which he may apply. This 
perhaps is worse even than the examination by a Bishop's Chap- 
lain ; but the English and Scottish Churches have, between them, 
the worst tests of clerical competency in Christendom. 

Nor even indirectly was there encouragement of any kind pre- 
sented by the universities for proficiency in classical attainments. 
The Degree in Arts, as it conferred no honour, was no object of 
ambition ; and when not an empty compliment, a minimum of the 
learned languages sufficed for the examination.! 

* [It is part and parcel of its general defect in scholarship, that the want 
of grammar or classical schools throughout the country has never, for some 
two centuries, been felt by our Church. A tythe of the agitation fruitlessly 
expended on some mistaken object, would have succeeded in forcing the 
state to remedy this opprobrium, which has so long and so heavily weighed 
on the clergy and people of Scotland.] 

t [In Edinburgh, a greater amount of knowledge is ostensibly required for 
this degree than in any other University ; but no other University can accept 
less, no other, I believe, accepts so little. The fundamental principle of 
academical graduation, not to ask more than must be given, is here, not only 
violated, but reversed. Had there been any prospect of a reform from with- 
out, I should long ago have proclaimed the evils to be amended ; and having 
no hope of a reform from within, it is now (I deem it proper publicly to state) 
many years since I overtly withdrew from every responsibility in the dis- 
charge of this, as of all other tnists, reposed in the Senatus Academicus. — 
One very simple remedy for, at least, the most disgraceful part of the 
degrees in Medicine and in Arts, would be to make it necessary for the can- 
didate to pass, for a preliminary minimum, an examination by some extra 
academical and disinterested board, taken, say, from the Masters of the 
High School or Edinburgh Academy, either or both.] 



342 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

Of old, the Scottish educational system was a more effectual 
mean of classical instruction than it proves at present ; but that 
it was never adequate to this end is proved by two facts, to which, 
on a former occasion, [Ed. No. hi.] we have alluded. — The first : — 
that although a trifling proportion of the educated ranks could 
have received their instruction and literary impulses abroad ; yet 
of Scottish scholars, all of the highest celebrity, and far more than 
nine-tenths of those, worthy of the name at all, have been either 
educated in foreign seminaries, or their tastes and studies deter- 
mined in the society of foreign learned men. — The second : — that 
although in other countries the clergy take, as a class, the highest 
place in the higher regions of erudition; yet in Scotland, from 
their dependence on the native seminaries for education, they 
have remained comparatively inferior in classical learning ; almost 
every scholar of distinguished note having, for nearly two cen- 
turies, been found among the laity. 

For those able to supply their development, the preceding 
hints may suffice, to explain the causes of the low state of classical 
learning in Scotland. In fact, were it not for the neighbourhood 
and ascendency of England, and that a considerable proportion of 
those who give a bias to public opinion receive their education and 
literary convictions out of Scotland, we are almost disposed to 
believe that in this country, Greek and Latin would long ere now 
have been studied, as we study Hebrew or Sanscrit. As it is, 
these influences are only decisive in the capital ; and even here 
the opinion of the more intelligent in favour of the primary im- 
portance of classical education is encountered by a numerous 
opposition. It is, indeed, fortunate for Edinburgh, that its classi- 
cal institutions have been powerfully upheld by the reputation and 
talents of their teachers ; but all that individual men, — all that 
individual seminaries, — all that partial and precarious influences 
can effect, are insufficient to turn back that tide of circumstances, 
which threatens, unless some public effort may arrest it, to whelm 
in one flood of barbarism, all that is most conducive to our intel- 
lectual and moral well-being, — all that is not subsidiary to vulgar 
interests, and to the comforts of an animal existence. 

The public is now awakening to the necessity of a better edu- 
cation for the people ; our self-satisfied contentment with the 
sufficiency of our parish schools, is already dissipated even in 
Scotland ; and the state cannot long withhold from the British 
nation what is already enjoyed by the other countries of Europe 



SCOTTISH SEMINARIES, CLASSICALLY INCOMPETENT. 348 

But it is the duty of a government, not only to provide for the 
necessary instruction of the people, but also to promote the liberal 
education of the higher orders ; and in particular, to secure a 
competent erudition in the church, and the other privileged pro- 
fessions. In Scotland, how defective soever be the system of 
popular schools, this may be viewed as complete and perfect, com- 
pared with the system of grammar schools. Until a sufficient 
number of these be established over Scotland, aud brought within 
the reach of those destined for an academical career, it is impos- 
sible that the universities can perform their proper function in the 
cultivation of learning ; or that the professions, and the clergy in 
particular, should be insured in that amount and quality of clas- 
sical knowledge which is requisite to place them on a level with 
their brethren in other countries. Nor until the patronage and 
regulation of our universities be deposited in more enlightened 
and disinterested hands, can we hope that solid learning will 
receive the preference and encouragement which a university 
should afford ; if academical, if liberal study is to be something 
higher than a mere popular cultivation of the amusing, of the pal- 
pable, of the vulgarly useful. Amid all the corruptions of Oxford, 
that university has maintained (from accidental circumstances, 
indeed,) this fundamental principle ; and it is the maintenance of 
this principle, however imperfectly applied, that was mainly the 
ground of our conviction, that if the legislature do its duty, 
Oxford is the university susceptible of the easiest and most effec- 
tual regeneration.* [Ed. No. iv.] 



These observations have detained us too long from our author ; 
and the length to which they have extended precludes us from 

* We have said nothing of the effect, of endowments specially destined for 
the encouragement of learning, by enabling the beneficiary to devote himself, 
without distraction, to the pursuits of erudition. There can be no doubt 
that such a mean, if properly applied, might be of important service. But 
where they do actually exist, — as in England, — fhese endowments have sel- 
dom been found wisely administered, and their effect, upon the whole, has 
been injurious rather than beneficial. In point of fact, the countries of 
Europe where learning in general, and classical learning in particular, has 
been most successfully cultivated, as Holland and Protestant Germany, pos- 
sess no advantages of the kind ; and are only superior to Scotland in a com- 
pleter organisation of schools, and a tolerable system of University patronage. 
— [See the next following article.] 



344 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

offering, as we meant, some contributions of our own in connection 
with the argument which he so ably and conclusively maintains. 

Professor Pillans opens the first Lecture with a rapid survey of 
national education in ancient and in modern times ; and he justly 
attributes to the states of the Germanic Union the glory of having 
first practically realized it as a great principle of political mora- 
lity, — that every government is bound to provide and to ensure 
the moral training and intellectual instruction of the whole body 
of its subjects. He shows the humiliating contrast in which Bri- 
tain stands in this respect to the states of Germany ; vindicates 
their enforcement of education by law ; and accords a well-merited 
encomium to the enlightened magnanimity of France in profiting 
by the experience, and in adopting the institutions of Prussia. 
After some valuable observations on the methods and principles of 
popular instruction, he signalizes the difference, in end and means, 
between the education of the lower and the education of the higher 
classes of society. . . . 

In the second Lecture, after exposing that most contemptible 
of all delusions, that the mere possession of facts, — the simple 
swallowing of truths, — is the end proposed by education, and 
showing that it is not by the amount of knowledge communicated, 
but by the amount of thought which such knowledge calls into 
activity, that the mind is exercised and developed, our author 
proceeds to contrast the advantages in this respect of mathematical 
and classical instruction. We are gratified to find that our own 
conclusions in regard to the minor value of mathematical study as 
a mean of mental cultivation are not opposed to those of so high 
an authority in practical education ; and that our convictions, 
both of the paramount utility, in this relation, of classical study, 
and of the errors by which, in practice, this utility is too often 
compromised, are in all respects the same with those of so philo- 
sophical a scholar. We must pass over his strictures on the great 
schools of England, in order to quote his unfavourable opinion of 
the organization of our Edinburgh classical schools ; — an organi- 
zation now peculiar, we believe, to Scotland, and which we have 
long been convinced is almost the only impediment that prevent* 
the distinguished zeal and ability of their teachers from carrying 
these seminaries to their attainable perfection. On the present 
plan, a new class commences every year under a separate master ; 
and the boys, however numerous, and however different in capa- 
city, remain during four years---/, e, — until they enter under the 



AUTHOR'S LECTURES. 345 

Rector — the exclusive pupils of the same classical instructor, 
whose emoluments are in proportion to the number of his peculiar 
scholars 

On the manifold disadvantages of this arrangement much might 
be said ; — and we could quote a host of authorities in favour of 
the scheme of promotion and retardation, as determined by solemn 
terminal examinations; — a scheme for centuries established in 
Holland, Germany, and other continental countries. Buchanan, 
in his plan of a classical school, in his " Opinion anent the Reforma- 
tion of the Universitie of St Androis" orders " that the classes 
shall be visit every quarter of a year, and promovit aftir ther 
merits." * In most countries this act takes place at half-yearly 
intervals. 

In his third and last Lecture our author is occupied with his 
principal subject, the vindication of classical studies from the 
charge of inutility, — an easy matter ; and the far more difficult 
task of illustrating the various and peculiar modes in which these 
studies exercise and improve the mind. We regret that we are 
unable to afford our readers more than a sample of his admirable 
observations. After a copious enumeration of the general advan- 
tages to be reaped from the study of the ancient authors, he pro- 
ceeds : — 

u But, again, it may be argued, Why might not all this be done, and 
done more compendiously and expeditiously, by taking the works of our 
own English authors for the substratum of this intellectual and moral train- 
ing? My answer is, that, with such means, it could not, I think, be done 
at all." 

u It is, indeed, a great and just boast of these languages (which have been 
called, from the circumstance, transpositive), that this liberty of arrangement 
enables the speaker or writer to dispose his thoughts to the best advantage. 

* Professor Pillans will be also pleased to find, from the same Opinion, 
which is, we believe, very little known, that his favourite " Monitorial Sys- 
tem " was carried into effect by Buchanan. It has not been noticed that in 
this plan of studies Buchanan was greatly indebted to his friend Sturmius ; 
and that great pedagogue is also a high authority in favour of the plan of 
instruction of the younger by older pupils. It had also previously been 
reduced to practice by Trotzendorf. For centuries, it has been prudently 
applied in Schulpforte, the prime classical school of Em-ope. The compul- 
sory lecturing, — the necessary regency, — of graduates or inceptors in the 
ancient universities mainly proceeded on the profound principle, Doce ut 
Discas. As the scholastic brocard runs : — 

" Discere si queer is, doceas, sic ipse doceris ; 
Nam studio tali tibi proficis at que sodali" 



346 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

and to place in most prominent relief those which he wishes to be peculiarly 
impressive ; and that thus they are pre-eminently fitted for the purposes of 
eloquence and poetry. It is owing to the same peculiarities in the structure 
of the ancient languages, that the writers in them were enabled to construct 
those long and curiously involved sentences, which any attempt to translate 
literally serves only to perplex and obscure ; but which presented to the 
ancient reader, as they do to the modern imbued with his taste and percep- 
tions, a beautiful, and, in spite of its complexity, a sweetly harmonizing 
system of thoughts. I have already alluded to the exertion of mind required 
to perceive all the bearings of such a sentence, as to an exercise well fitted 
for sharpening the faculties ; and this view of the ancient tongues — consider- 
ed as instruments of thought widely differing from, and in most respects 
superior to, our own — is one which recommends them to be used also as 
instruments of education. 

u Again, our mother tongue is so entwined and identified with our early and 
ordinary habits of thinking and speaking, it forms so much a part of ourselves 
from the nursery upwards, that it is extremely difficult to place it, so to speak, 
at a sufficient distance from the mind's eye to discern its nature, or to judge of 
its proportions. It is, besides, so uncompounded in its structure, — so patch- 
work-like in its composition, so broken down into particles, so scanty in its 
inflections, and so simple in its fundamental rules of construction, that it is 
next to impossible to have a true grammatical notion of it, or to form indeed 
any correct ideas of grammar and philology at all, without being able to com- 
pare and contrast -it with another language, and that other of a character 
essentially different." 

Nothing has more contributed in this country to disparage the 
cause of classical education than the rendering it the education of 
all. That to many this education can be of little or no advan- 
tage, is a truth too manifest to be denied ; and on this admission 
the sophism is natural, to convert " useless to many " into " useful 
to none." With us, the learned languages are at once taught too 
extensively, and not intensively enough; an absurdity in which 
we are now left almost alone in Europe. We may notice that the 
distinction of schools, to which, in the following passage, Mr 
Pillans alludes, is not peculiar to Prussia, but has been long uni- 
versal in the German and Scandinavian states: even Russia has 
adopted it. 

" The strongest case against the advocates for classical education, is the 
practice that has hitherto prevailed of making it so general as to include 
boys of whom it is known beforehand that they are to engage in the ordinary 
pursuits of trade and commerce ; who are not intended to prosecute their 
education farther than school, and are not therefore likely to follow out tin 1 
subject of their previous studies much, or at all, beyond the period of their 
attendance there. 

" I willingly allow, and have already admitted, that a youth who looks 
forward from the von outset to the practice of some mechanical or even 



AUTHOR'S LECTURES. 347 

purely scientific art, may employ his time better, in acquiring manual dex- 
terity and mathematical knowledge, than in making himself imperfectly 
acquainted with a dead language. There must be in all very large and 
populous towns, a class of persons in tolerably easy circumstances, and 
whose daily business affords them considerable leisure, but who contemplate 
for their children nothing beyond such acquirements as shall enable them to 
follow out the gainful occupation, and move in the narrow circle, in which 
they themselves, and their fathers before them, have spent a quiet and 
inoffensive life. It was for youth of this sort that the Prussian government, 
v ith a sagacity and foresight characteristic of all its educational proceedings, 
provided what are called buerger and mittel-schulen— intermediate steps be- 
tween the volks-schulen, and primary schools, and the Gymnasia, or gelehrte- 
schulen; and the French have wisely followed the example of Prussia, by 
ordaining the establishment of ecoles moyennes, called also ecoles primaires 
superieures, in all towns above a certain population." 

From the specimens now adduced, the reader is enabled to 
form certainly a high, but by no means an adequate estimate of 
these lectures. To be properly appreciated, the whole reasoning 
must be studied in connection — which, we are confident, few, sin- 
cerely interested in the subject, will fail to do. 



Ill— ON THE PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTEN- 
DENCE OF UNIVERSITIES.* 



(April, 1834.; 



Report made to His Majesty, by a Royal Commission of Inquiry 
into the State of the Universities of Scotland. (Ordered by the 
House of Commons to be printed, 7th October, 1831.) 

We have long had it in view to consider this Report, both with 
respect to what it contains, and to what it omits. At present we 
must limit ourselves to the latter head ; and in particular shall 
endeavour to make up for its remarkable silence as to the systems 
of Academical Patronage in this country, their palpable defects, 
and the means of improvement. This, and the revision and for- 
mation of- constitutions, were the only objects upon which its 
framers could have employed themselves beneficially ; for it is of 
far more importance to secure good Teachers, than to make rules 
about Teaching ; and it shall be our present endeavour to show 
in what way this primary end must be attained in principle, how 
it has been attained in other countries, and might be rendered 
attainable in our own. On a future occasion, we may perhaps 
make some observations on the more censurable parts of the 
Report with respect to Teaching and Academical Policy ; mean- 
while, we shall touch principally on the one capital omission now 
commemorated. 

This omission, however singular it may appear, is not without 
excuse. During the ascendency of those principles of govern- 
ment under which the Commission was constituted, to have 
deprived public trustees of their office only for incompetence 
and self-seeking, would have been felt a far-reaching and a very 

* [Omitted, some interpolations of little moment.] 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 349 

dangerous precedent; and so long as The Great Corporation 
remained the pattern and the patron of corruption, to have at- 
tempted a reform of minor corporations would have been at once 
preposterous and unavailing. At the same time, the theory of 
educational establishments is so little understood in this country, 
and so total an ignorance, prevails in regard to what has been 
practically accomplished in foreign Universities, past and present, 
that the Commissioners are hardly to be blamed for any limited 
and erroneous views of the imperfections of our academical sys- 
tem, or of the measures to be adopted for its improvement. To 
the same cause is it to be attributed, that while all admit, in pro- 
portion to their intelligence, the defective patronage of our Uni- 
versities, there are few who do not resign themselves to a comfort- 
less despair of the possibility of any important melioration. Yet, 
this despair is itself the principal, — indeed, the only obstacle to 
such a result. And to show that it is totally unfounded, that, in 
theory, the principles which regulate the right organization of 
academical patronage are few, simple, and self-evident, and that 
in practice, these have always proved successful, even when very 
rudely applied, is the purpose of the following observations. They 
pretend only to attract public attention to the subject ; and fully 
convinced of the truth and expediency of our views, we regret that 
the exposition we can now afford them, is so inadequate to their 
paramount importance. 

Universities are establishments founded and privileged by the 
State for 'public purposes : they accomplish these purposes through 
their Professors ; * and the right of choosing professors is a public 
Trust confided to an individual or body of men, solely to the end, 
that the persons best qualified for its duties, may be most certainly 
procured for the vacant chair. — Let us explicate this definition of 
academical patronage in detail. 

I. In the first place, in regard to the nature of academical 
patronage : t — That it is a trust conferred by, and to be adminis- 

* Oxford and Cambridge are no exceptions. Inasmuch as they now ac- 
complish nothing through their professors, they are no longer Universities ; 
and this even by their own statutes. 

t The term Patron, as applied to those to whom the election of public func- 
tionaries is confided, is not unobjectionable ; inasmuch as it comprehends 
both those who have at least a qualified right of property in the situations to 
which they nominate, and those who are purely trustees for the community. 
In the poverty of language, precision must, however, often bend to con- 
venience. 



350 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

tered solely for, the benefit of the public, no one, we are confi- 
dent, will be intrepid enough to deny. On the part of a Uni- 
versity patron, such denial would be virtually an act of official 
suicide. Assuming, therefore, this as incontrovertible, it neces- 
sarily follows : — 

1°, That the reason of lodging this patronage in certain hands, 
was the belief held at the time by the public or its administra- 
tors, that these were, under circumstances, the best qualified to 
work out the intention of the trust ; consequently, if this belief 
be subsequently found erroneous, or, if circumstances change, so 
as to render either these hands less competent to discharge the 
duty, or others more ; then is the only reason gone for the 
longer continuance of the patronage in the original trustees, and 
it forthwith becomes the duty of the State to consign it anew to 
worthier depositaries. 

2°, That the patronage is wisely deposited in proportion as the 
depositary is so circumstanced as to be kept ever conscious of 
his character of trustee, and made to appreciate highly the im- 
portance of his trust. Consequently, that organization is radically 
vicious, which conjoins in the same person, the trustee and the 
beneficiary ; in other words, where the academical patron and 
professor are identical. 

3°, That the patron has no claim to a continuance of his office, 
from the moment that the interest of the public demands its re- 
sumption, and transference to better hands. 

II. In the second place, in regard to the end which academical 
patronage proposes, — the surest appointment of the highest qua- 
lifications, — it is evident that this implies two conditions in the 
patron : — 1°, The capacity of discovering such qualifications ; and, 
2°, The inclination to render such discovery effectual. 

In regard to the former : — The capacity of discovering the 
highest qualifications is manifestly in proportion to the higher in- 
telligence of the patron, and to the wider comprehension of his 
sphere of choice. — The intelligence of the patron requires no com- 
ment. As to his sphere of choice, this may either be limited by 
circumstances over which he has no control, or it may be contract- 
ed, without external necessity, by his own incapacity or want of 
will. Religion, country, language, &c, may, on the one hand, 
by law, exclude from his consideration the worthiest objects of 
preference ; and on the other, the advantages attached to the 
office in his gift, may not afford an adequate inducement to thtfite 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 351 

whom he finds most deserving of his choice. For these a patron 
has not to answer. But if he allow himself to be restricted in his 
outlook by sectarian and party prejudices, — above all, if he con- 
fine his choice to those only who will condescend to sue him as 
candidates for the office ; he certainly excludes from his considera- 
tion the greater proportion of those best qualified for the appoint- 
ment, possibly even the whole ; and the end of the trust confided 
to him remains most imperfectly accomplished. 

In regard to the latter condition, — the disposition in the patron 
to render the discovery of the best qualified persons available : — 
It is evident that his power to do this must depend on the 
temptation which he can hold out to their ambition. — A system 
of patronage is therefore good or bad, in proportion as it tends 
to elevate or to degrade the value of its appointments ; that is, 
as it tends to render them objects of competition or contempt. 
The value of an academical office, estimated by the inducements 
which it holds out to men of eminence, is a sum formed by an 
addition of sundry items. There are, — 1°, The greater emolu- 
ment attached to it ; 2°, The less irksome and more intellectual 
character of its duty ; 3°, The amenity of situation, the agreeable 
society, and other advantages of the town and country in which 
the University is situated. These are more or less beyond the 
power of the patron. But, in another way, it is in the power of 
patrons, and of patrons only, greatly to raise or sink the value 
of academical appointments. As the patronage is administered, 
the professorial body is illustrious or obscure, and the place of 
colleague either an honour or a discredit. In one University, an 
appointment is offered by a spontaneous call, and prized as a cri- 
terion of celebrity. In another, even the chance of success must 
be purchased by humiliation; success is but the triumph of 
favour, and an appointment the badge of servility and intrigue. 
Thus, under one set of patrons, a professorship will be accepted 
as a distinction by the person who would scorn to solicit, or even 
accept, a chair of thrice its emolument, under another. In one 
country the professorial status is high, and the academy robs the 
professions of the best abilities ; in another, it is low, and the 
professions leave the academy, however amply endowed, only 
their refuse. Of this, the comparative history of the European 
Universities, and our own in particular, affords numerous and 
striking proofs. 

Ill, In the third place, such being the nature, and such the 



352 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

end, of academical patronage, we must finally consider what is 
the proper organization of its instruments ; in other words, what 
person or persons are most likely to feel intensely the obligations 
of the trust, and to be able to realize completely its intention. It 
is evident that the problem here, is, simply, how to find a patron, 
or how to constitute a board of patrons, that shall most certainly, 
and in the highest degree, possess these two qualities — Good Will 
and Capacity. 

In regard to good will, — a patron will be well disposed pre- 
cisely in proportion as he has motives more and stronger to fulfil, 
fewer and weaker to violate, his duty. The aim, therefore, of an 
enlightened scheme of patronage, is, in the first place, to supply 
him with as many as possible of the one class, and in the second, 
to remove from him as many as possible of the other. 

As to the supply of direct motives: — Independently of the 
general interest which academic patrons, in common with all 
intelligent and patriotic citizens must feel in the welfare of their 
Universities, it is evident, that motives peculiarly determining 
them to a zealous discharge of their trust, will be given by con- 
necting their personal honour and dishonour with the appoint- 
ment of worthy and unworthy professors ; and that this motive 
will be strong or weak, in proportion as, on the one hand, the 
honour or dishonour is more or less intense and enduring in its 
application, and on the other, as the patrons are persons of a cha- 
racter more or less alive to the public opinion of their conduct. 
These conditions determine the following principles, as regulating 
the organization of a board of academical patronage. 

1°, The patrons must be few : to the end that their responsibi- 
lity may be concentrated ; in other words, that the praise or blame 
attributed to their acts may not be weakened by dissemination 
among numbers. 

2°, The board of patrons must be specially constituted ad hoc ; 
at least, if it discharges any other function, that should be of an 
analogous and subordinate nature. Nothing tends more directly 
to lower in the eyes of the patron and of the public, the import- 
ance of an academical patronage ; consequently, nothing tends 
more to enervate and turn off the credit or discredit attached to 
its acts, and to weaken the sense of responsibility felt in its dis- 
charge, than the right of appointing professors in general, or, 
still more, of appointing to individual chairs, being thrown in as 
an accidental, and consequently a minor duty, to be lightly per- 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 353 

formed by functionaries not chosen as competent to this par- 
ticular duty, but constituted for a wholly different purpose. — But 
with its patronage is naturally conjoined as an inferior function, 
the general superintendence of a University ; academical curators 
and patrons should in fact always be the same. 

3°, Where a country possesses more than one University, each 
should have its separate board of patronage ; in order that the 
patrons may have the motive of mutual emulation, and that public 
opinion may be formed on a comparative estimate. 

4°, The patrons should be, at least, conditionally permanent ; 
that is, not holding their office for life, but re-appointed, from 
time to time, if their conduct merit approval. And this for two 
reasons. Because honour and dishonour apply with less effect to 
a transitory patron, — seldom known and soon forgotten ; and 
because as it is only after a considerable term of years that 
patrons can effect the elevation or decline of a University, so it is 
only a permanent patron who can feel a strong personal interest 
in the celebrity of a school, and to whom the glory of being the 
promoter of its prosperity, can operate as a high inducement. 

5°, To impress more deeply on the patrons the obligations and 
importance of their office, they should make oath, in the most 
solemn manner, on their entrance upon office, to the impartial and 
diligent discharge of their duty ; and perhaps in every report to 
the higher authority, they should declare upon their honour, and 
with special reference to their oath, that their choice has been 
determined, without favour, and solely by the pre-eminent quali- 
fications of its object. 

6°, The patrons will be most likely to appreciate highly the 
importance of their function, and to feel acutely the praise or 
reprobation which their acts deserve, if taken from the class of 
society inferior, but only inferior, to the highest. If a patron is 
appointed from his rank or station, — he is perhaps above the 
influence of public opinion ; the office is to him only a subordinate 
distinction ; and the very fact of his appointment, while it tells 
him that its duties are neither difficult nor momentous — for, was 
he selected for his ability to discharge them ? — is in fact the most 
pernicious precedent to him in his own disposal of the patronage 
itself. If the patron be of a low rank, he is probably patron 
only by official accident ; is too uninstructed to understand the 
importance of a duty thus abandoned to hazard ; is too grovelling 
to be actuated by public opinion, and too obscure to be its object ; 



354 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

while at the same time he is exposed to incentives to violate his 
trust, strong in proportion to the impotence of the motives per- 
suading its fulfilment. That patron will perform his duty best, 
who owes his nomination solely to his competence ; who regards 
the office as his chiefest honour ; and who, without being the slave 
of public opinion, which he should be qualified to guide, is neither 
above nor beneath its salutary influence. 

The removal of all counter motives from a patron, to the dis- 
charge of his duty, or of all ability to carry such into effect, 
determines the following precautions : — 

7°, The patrons must be a body as much as possible removed 
from the influence of personal motives, apart from or opposed to 
their preference of the most worthy. The professorial college 
will therefore, of all others, not constitute the body by which it is 
itself elected. 

8°, The patrons should have the virtual and recommendatory, 
but not the formal and definitive appointment. This should belong 
to a higher authority, — say a Minister of State. A non-acquies- 
cence in their recommendation, which would of course necessitate 
their resignation, and throw them back on their electors, could 
never take place without strong reason : but its very possibility 
would tend effectually to prevent its occurrence. 

9°, With the report of their decision, the patrons should be 
required to make an articulate statement of the grounds on which 
their opinion has been formed, that the object of their preference 
is the individual best qualified for the vacant chair. 

Touching the quality of capacity — that is, the power of dis- 
covering and making effectual the discovery of the best accom- 
plished individuals, — this affords the following conditions : — 

1°, The patrons should be appointed specially ad hoc, and from 
their peculiar qualification for the discharge of the office. 

2°, They should be men of integrity, prudence, and compe- 
tent acquirement, animated by a love of literature and science, 
and of an unexclusive liberality ; in short, either knowing them- 
selves, or able to discover, who are the individuals worthy of 
preference. 

3°, The patronage should be vested in a small plurality. In 
more than one ; — to obviate the errors of individual judgment, and 
to resist the influences that might prove too powerful for a single 
will ; to secure the animation of numbers, a division of labour, 
more extensive, applicable, and impartial information, opposite 



EXCELLENCE AND PROSPERITY NOT IDENTICAL. 355 

views, and a many-sided discussion of their merits. Not in 
many ; — that the requisite intelligence, &c., may be possessed by 
the whole body ; that the presence of all may be ensured ; that 
each may feel his importance, and co-operate in the inquiries and 
deliberations ; that they may understand each other ; take, in 
common, comprehensive, anticipative views ; and concur in active 
measures to obtain the object of their preference : for, be it 
remembered, a numerous body can elect only out of those whom 
a situation suits ; a small body out of those who suit the situation. 
Reasoning and experience prove that this patronage is best vested 
in a board varying from two to five members. Four is perhaps 
the preferable number ; the senior patron having, in case of 
divided opinions, a decisive suffrage. 

4°, The office of academical patron should be permanent, under 
the condition we have already stated ; as no other is more depen- 
dent for its due discharge on the experience of the functionary, 
on the consistency and perseverance of his measures. 

The principles thus manifest in theory, have been universally 
and exclusively approved in practice. Precisely as they have 
been purely and thoroughly applied, have Universities always 
risen to distinction ; precisely as they have been neglected or 
reversed, have Universities always sunk into contempt. 

The intrinsic excellence of a school is not to be confounded with 
its external prosperity, estimated by the multitude of those who 
flock to it for education. Attendance may be compelled by exclu- 
sive privileges, or bribed by numerous endowments. [Its degree 
may be still required for this or that profession, though no longer 
furnishing a true certificate of the relative acquirement which it 
originally guaranteed. (The degrees of the English Universities.) 
Its degree, with ostensibly higher honours, may be offered at 
really as cheap a rate as the corresponding licence of less privi- 
leged incorporations. (The medical degrees of, some at least, of 
our Scottish Universities.) ] The accident of its locality, as in a 
great city ; the cheapness of its instruction ; the distance of other 
seminaries, or seminaries of superior character ; and, withal, the 
low standard of learning in a nation, and the consequent ignorance 
of its defects, may all concur in causing the apparent prosperity 
of a University, which merits, from its real excellence, neither 
encouragement nor toleration. It is only when Universities are 
placed in competition, and that on equal terms, that the two attri- 
butes are convertible. To this explanation we must add another. 



35G ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

Our assertion only applies to Universities in the circumstances of 
their more modern co-existence. When the same religion, studies, 
and literary language, connected Europe into a single community ; 
when Universities, cosmopolite in character, few in number, and 
affording the only organs, not of instruction and exercise merely, 
but of publication, counted by myriads the scholars they attracted 
from the most distant countries ; when, opening to their graduates 
a free concurrence in the then all-glorious field of academical 
instruction, prelates, and even princes, sought to earn from the 
assembled nations the fame of talent, eloquence, and learning ; 
then the best instructor naturally found his place, and an artificial 
patronage was as inexpedient as it would have proved impractica- 
ble. Its necessity arose during the progress of a total change of 
circumstances. When Christendom was shattered into fragments ; 
when the Universities, multiplied to excess in every country, 
speaking each only its own vernacular, and dwindled to sectarian 
schools, no longer drew distant nations to their seat, and concen- 
trated in a few foci the talent of the Christian world ; when the 
necessity of personal congress at points of literary communication 
was superseded by the press ; when the broad freedom of acade- 
mical instruction was replaced by a narrow monopoly, and even 
the interest of the monopolists themselves remained no longer 
solely dependent on their ability and zeal ; — in this complete 
reversal of all old relations, the necessity of a careful selection of 
the academical teacher arose, and henceforward the worth of 
Universities was regulated by the wisdom and integrity of those 
to whom this choice was confided. 

The excellence of a University is to be estimated by a crite- 
rion compounded of these two elements : — 1. The higher degree 
of learning and ability displayed by its professorial body ; and, 
2. The more general diffusion of these qualities among the mem- 
bers of that body. 

Taking a general survey of the European Universities, in their 
co-existence and progress, and comparing them by this criterion, 
we find three groups prominently distinguished from the others, 
by the higher celebrity of a larger proportion of their professors. 
These are the Italian, — the Dutch, — and, for nearly the last 
hundred years, the German Protestant Universities. On exa- 
mining their constitution, we find that the only circumstance of 
similarity among themselves, and of contrast to all others, is the 
machinery of their patronage and superintendence, consisting of a 



ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES— PADUA. 357 

board of trustees specially constituted for the purpose, small, intel- 
ligent, perennial. 

Of the three great Universities of Italy, Bologna, Padua, and 
Pisa, our information is less precise in relation to the first ; but, 
although the most wealthy and ancient of the Italian schools, 
Bologna did not continue to equal her two principal rivals in the 
average celebrity of her teachers. Of Pavia we need not speak. 

The Italian were originally distinguished from the Transalpine 
Universities by two differences ; — the early introduction of sala- 
ried teachers ; and the restriction of privileged instruction to these 
teachers, who in Italy, as throughout the rest of Europe, enjoyed 
their salary under condition of gratuitous instruction. The evil 
consequences of such a system were, however, in Italy, counter- 
acted by the circumstances under which it was carried into ope- 
ration. 

The endowed chairs were there of two kinds, — Ordinary and 
Extraordinary. The former, fewer in number, were generally of 
higher emolument than the latter. For each subject of import- 
ance there were always two, and commonly three rival chairs ; 
and a powerful and ceaseless emulation was thus maintained 
among the teachers. The Ordinary Doctors strove to keep up 
their celebrity, — to merit a still more lucrative and creditable 
appointment, — and not to be surpassed by their junior competi- 
tors. The Extraordinary Doctors struggled to enhance their 
reputation, — to secure their re-election, — and to obtain a chair of 
higher emolument and honour. 

The appointment, continuance, and dismissal of professors, long 
appertained to the Students, (there comparatively old,) who, in 
their Faculties and Nations, annually or biennially elected to all, 
or to a large proportion of the chairs. 

In Padua, the policy of the Venetian Senate was, from the 
middle of the fifteenth century, (when the ancient numerous resort 
of the University had declined), directed to the restriction and 
abolition of this popular right, and after several fruitless, and sun- 
dry partial measures, the privilege was at length, in 1560, totally 
withdrawn. The Venetian Fathers were, however, too wise in 
their generation to dream of exercising this important function 
themselves. Under the Republic of Padua, the Princes of Car- 
rara, and the Venetian domination, prior to 1515, two, and subse- 
quently four Paduan citizens, of distinguished prudence, had been 
chosen to watch over the University, and to suggest the persons 
proper to be nominated to vacant chairs. In 1516, they were 



358 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

reduced to three, and the election of these academical Triumvirs 
( Triumviri Studiorum, Moderatores Academice, Riformatori dello 
Studio di Padova,) intrusted to the six senators of the venerable 
College of Seniors, by whose wisdom the most important affairs of 
the Republic were administered. To this small and select body 
of Moderators, the Senate delegated the general care of the Uni- 
versity ; and, in particular, that of looking around through Europe 
for the individuals best qualified to supply the wants of the Uni- 
versity. Nor were they easily satisfied. The plurality of con- 
current chairs (which long continued) superseded the necessity of 
hasty nominations ; and it not unfrequently happened that a prin- 
cipal Ordinary was vacant for years, before the Triumvirs found 
an individual sufficiently worthy of the situation. On the other 
hand, where the highest celebrity was possibly to be obtained, 
nothing could exceed the liberality of the Senate, or the zeal of 
the Moderators ; and Padua was thus long eminently fortunate, in 
her competition for illustrious teachers with the most favoured 
Universities of Europe. 

In Pisa, the students do not appear to have ever exercised so 
preponderant an influence in the election of their teachers as in 
Padua, or even Bologna. From the period of the restoration of 
the University by Lorenzo de' Medici, the academical patronage 
of the state was virtually exercised by a small, intelligent and 
responsible body. In 1472, the Senate of Florence decreed that 
five Prefects should be chosen out of the citizens, qualified for the 
magistracy, to whom should be confided the superintendence both 
of the Florentine and Pisan Universities. These were annually 
elected ; but as re-election was competent, the body was in reality 
permanent. Lorenzo appears among the first. In 1543, Cosmo 
de' Medici gave new statutes to the University of Pisa, with which 
that of Florence had been united. By these, beside the Prefects, 
who were not resident in Pisa, a Curator or Provisor was esta- 
blished on the spot. This office was for life ; nor merely honor- 
ary, for attached to it was the Priorship of the Knights of St 
Stephen. The Curator was charged with the general superinten- 
dence of student and professor ; and whatever directly or indi- 
rectly concerned the well-being of the University, was within his 
sphere. In the appointment of professors, he exercised a great 
and salutary influence. The Prefects were the definitive electors ; 
it was, however, the proximate duty of the Curator to look around 
for the individuals suited to the wants of the University, and to 
bring their merits under the judgment of the Prefects. How be- 



ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES— PISA ; DUTCH— LEYDEN. 359 

neficially the Curator and Prefects acted as mutual stimuli and 
checks, requires no comment. 

By this excellent organisation of the bodies to whom their 
academical patronage was confided, Padua and Pisa, in spite of 
many unfavourable circumstances, long maintained a distinguished 
reputation; nor was it until the system which had determined 
their celebrity was adopted and refined in other seminaries, that 
they lost the decided pre-eminence among the Universities of 
Europe. From the integrity of their patrons, and the lofty 
standard by which they judged, the call to a Paduan or Pisan 
chair was deemed the highest of all literary honours. The status 
of Professor was in Italy elevated to a dignity, which in other 
countries it has never reached ; and not a few of the most illus- 
trious teachers in the Italian seminaries, were of the proudest 
nobility of the land. While the Universities of other countries 
had fallen from Christian and cosmopolite, to sectarian and local 
schools, it is the peculiar glory of the Italian, that under the 
enlightened liberality of their patrons, they still continued to 
assert their European universality. Creed and country were in 
them no bar ; the latter not even a reason of preference. Foreign- 
ers of every nation are to be found among their professors ; and 
the most learned man of Scotland (Dempster) sought in a Pisan 
chair, that theatre for his abilities which he could not find at 
home. When Calvinist Leyden was expatriating her second 
Boerhaave, the Catholic Yan Swieten ; Catholic Pisa had drawn 
from Leyden the Calvinist foreigner Gronovius. In Schismatic 
England, a single sect excludes all others from the privileges of 
University instruction ; in Catholic Italy, even the academic 
chairs have not been closed against the heretic. 

The system was, however, carried to a higher perfection in 
the Dutch Universities ; and notwithstanding some impediments 
arising from religious restrictions, (subsequent to the Synod of 
Dordt,) its efficiency was in them still more conspicuously dis- 
played. 

It was first realised in Leyden, the oldest of these seminaries ; 
and from the greater means and more extensive privileges of that 
University, whose degrees were favoured throughout France, its 
operation was there more decisive. 

In reward of the heroic defence made by the citizens in the 
memorable siege of Leyden, they received from the States their 
choice of an immunity from taxation, or of a University. They 



360 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

chose the latter. But though a recompense to the city, and though 
the civic aristocracy was in no other country so preponderant as 
in Holland, the patronage of the new establishment was not asked 
by, nor conceded to, the municipality. Independently of reason, 
experience had shown the evil effects of such a constitution in the 
neighbouring University of Louvain, where the magistrates and 
the professors rivalled each other in their character of patrons, to 
prove, by a memorable example, how the wealthiest endowments, 
and the most extensive privileges, only co-operate with a vicious 
system of patronage in sinking a venerable school into contempt. 
The appointment of professors, and the general superintendence 
of the new University, were confided to a body of three Curators, 
with whom was associated the Mayor of Leyden for the time 
being. One of these Curators was taken from the body of nobles, 
and chosen by them ; the two others, drawn from the cities of 
Holland, or from the courts of justice, were elected by the States 
of the province. The duration of the office was originally for 
nine years, but custom soon prolonged it for life. The Curators 
were recompensed by the high distinction of their office, but were 
allowed a learned Secretary, with a salary proportioned to his 
trouble. 

The system thus established continues, to the present hour, in 
principle the same ; but the changes in the political circumstances 
of the country have necessarily occasioned changes in the consti- 
tution of the body, — whether for the interest of the University is 
still a doubtful problem. Until the revolutionary epoch, no alter- 
ation was attempted in the college of Curators ; and its perma- 
nence, amid the ruin of almost every ancient institution, proves, 
independently of other evidence, that all parties were at one in 
regard to its virtue and efficiency. In 1795, the four Curators 
were increased to five, and all made permanent. Of these, three 
were elected by the national delegates, two by the municipality of 
Leyden ; and the spirit in which they were chosen, even during 
the frenzy of the period, is shown in the appointments of Sante- 
nius and De Bosch, — the most illustrious scholars in the curatory 
since the age of Douza. On the restoration of the House of 
Orange, and establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a 
uniform constitution was given to the Batavian and Belgian Uni- 
versities. By the statutes promulgated in 1815 for the former, 
and in 1816 for the latter, it is provided that " in each Univer- 
sity" (these were now Leyden, Utrecht, and Gronwgen, Louvain. 



DUTCH UNIVERSITIES-LEYDEN. 361 

Ghent, and Liege,) " there shall be a board of Curators, consist- 
ing of five persons, distinguished both by their love of literature 
and the sciences, and by their rank in society." " The Curators 
shall take precedence according to the date of their appoint- 
ment ;" but in the statutes of the Belgian Universities, it is stated, 
" the President shall be named by the King, and must be resident 
in the town where the University is established." " These cura- 
tors shall be nominated immediately by the King, and chosen, — 
at least three-fifths of them, — in the province where the Univer- 
sity is established ; the two others may be chosen from the adja- 
cent provinces." " The chief magistrate of the town in which the 
University is situated, is, in virtue, but only during the continu- 
ance, of his office, a member of the college of Curators." Beside 
the duties touching the superintendence and administration of the 
University, " when a chair falls vacant, the curators shall propose 
to the Department of Instruction in the Arts and Sciences" (in 
the Batavian statutes, " to the ministry of the Home Depart- 
ment,") " two candidates for the situation, and they shall subjoin 
to their proposal the reasons which have determined their choice. 
The definitive nomination shall be made by the King." To hold, 
annually, two ordinary and as many occasional meetings as cir- 
cumstances may require. " The curators shall, on their appoint- 
ment, make, before the King, the following oath : I swear (I pro- 
mise) fidelity to the country and to the King. I swear to observe 
the regulations and enactments concerning academical establish- 
ments, in so far as they concern my function of Curator of the 

University of , and to co-operate, in so far as in me lies, to 

its welfare and celebrity" Office of curator gratuitous ; certain 
travelling expenses allowed. " To every college of Curators a 
Secretary is attached, bearing the title of Secretary-inspector, 
and having a deliberative voice in their meetings. He shall be 
bound to residence in the town where the University is esta- 
blished, and, when the college of Curators is not assembled, shall 
watch that the measures touching the high instruction and the 
regulations of the University are observed, &c." This Secretary 
was salaried. 

"We have spoken specially oiLeyden, but all the schools of Hol- 
land owed their celebrity to the same constitution ; and the emula- 
tion of these different boards contributed greatly to their prosperity. 
The University of Franeker, founded in 1585, had three Curators 
and a Secretary. That of Groningen, founded in 1615, was 



332 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

governed by a college of six Curators, appointed by the States of 
the province. Utrecht, raised from a Schola Illustris to a Univer- 
sity in 1636, and in endowments second only to Ley den, had five 
Curators and a Secretary. For Harderwick (we believe) there was 
a board of five Curators and a President. The Athenceum of Amster- 
dam, which emulated the Universities of Leyden and Utrecht, was 
governed by two Curators ; and the other Scholae Illustres were 
under a similar constitution. On the curatorial system likewise 
was established the excellence of the classical schools of Holland ; 
and these, as recently admitted by the most competent authority 
in Germany, (Thiersch,) have been long, with a few individual 
exceptions in Germany, the best throughout Europe. 

But let us consider how the system wrought. We shall speak 
only of Leyden. 

It is mainly to John Van der Does, Lord of JNoortwyk, a dis- 
tinguished soldier and statesman, but still more celebrated as a 
universal scholar, under the learned appellative of Janus Douza, 
that the school of Leyden owes its existence and reputation. As 
governor of that city, he had baffled the leaguer of Requesens ; 
and his ascendency, which moved the citizens to endure the 
horrors of the blockade, subsequently influenced them to prefer, 
to a remission of imposts, the boon of a University. In the con- 
stitution of the new seminary it was he who was principally con- 
sulted ; and his comprehensive erudition, which earned for him 
the titles of the " Batavian Varro," and " Common Oracle of the 
University," but still more his lofty views and unexclusive 
liberality, enabled him to discharge, for above thirty years, the 
function of first curator with unbounded influence and unparalleled 
success. Gerard Van Hoogeveen, and Cornelius de Coning, were 
his meritorious colleagues. 

Douza's principles were those which ought to regulate the 
practice of all academical patrons ; and they were those of his 
successors. He knew, that at the rate learning was seen prized 
by the state in the academy, would it be valued by the nation at 
large. In his eyes, a University was not merely a mouthpiece 
of necessary instruction, but at once a pattern of lofty erudition, 
and a stimulus to its attainment. He knew that professors wrought 
more even by example and influence than by teaching ; that it 
was theirs to pitch high or low the standard of learning in a 
country ; and that as it proved arduous or easy to come up to 
them, they awoke either a restless endeavour after an ever loftier 



DUTCH UNIVERSITIES— LEYDEN. 363 

attainment, or lulled into a self-satisfied conceit. And this rela- 
tion between the professorial body and the nation, held also 
between the professors themselves. Imperative on ail, it was 
more particularly incumbent on the first curators of a University, 
to strain after the very highest qualifications ; for it was theirs to 
determine the character which the school should afterwards main- 
tain ; and theirs to give a higher tone to the policy of their suc- 
cessors. With these views, Douza proposed to concentrate in 
Ley den a complement of professors all illustrious for their learn- 
ing ; and if the most transcendent erudition could not be procured 
for the University, with the obligation of teaching, that it should 
still be secured to it without. For example. Lipsius, (i the Prince 
of Latin literature," had retired. Who was to replace him? Joseph 
Scaliger, the most learned man whom the world has ever seen, 
was then living a dependent in the family of Rochepozay. He, 
of all men, was if possible to be obtained. The celebrated Bau- 
dius, and Tuningius, professor of civil law, were commissioned 
to proceed as envoys to France, with authority to tender the 
appointment, and to acquiesce in any terms that the illustrious 
scholar might propose. Nor was this enough. Not only did the 
Curators of the University and the Municipality of Ley den write 
in the most flattering strain to the " Prince of the literary Senate," 
urging his acquiescence, but also the States of Holland, and 
Maurice of Orange. Nay, the States and Stadtholder preferred 
likewise strong solicitations to the King of France to employ his 
influence on their behalf with the " Phoenix of Europe ;" which the 
great Henry cordially did. The negotiation succeeded. Leyden 
was illustrated ; the general standard of learned acquirement in 
the country, and the criterion of professorial competency, were 
elevated to a lofty pitch; erudition was honoured above riches 
and power, in the person of her favourite son ; nor had the fallen 
despot of Verona to regret his ancestral dignity, whilst republics, 
and princes, and kings, were suitors to the " Dictator of the Com- 
monwealth of Letters." — After the death of Scaliger, who never 
taught, the curators, with a liberality in which they were soon 
after checked, tried to induce Julius Pacius (for whom the Uni- 
versities of Germany, of France, and, though a heretic, of his 
native Italy, likewise contended,) to accept a large salary, on con- 
dition only of residence in Leyden. But the place of Scaliger 
was to be filled by the only man who may contest with him the 
supremacy of learning ; and Salmasius, who, though a Protes- 



364 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

tant, had been invited to Padua, but under the obligation of lec- 
turing, preferred the literary leisure of Leyden, with the emolu- 
ments and honours which its curators and magistracy lavished on 
him: — simply, that, as his call declares, "he might improve by 
conversation, and stimulate by example, the learned of the place ; " 
or, in the words of his funeral orator, " ut nominis sui honor em 
Academic huic impertiret, scriptis eandem illustraret, pra^sentia 
condecoraret." And yet the working professors of Leyden, at 
that time, formed a constellation of great men which no other 
University could exhibit.* 

Such is a sample of the extraordinary efforts (for such sinecures 
were out of rule) of the first curators of Leyden, to raise their 
school to undisputed pre-eminence, and their country to the most 
learned in Europe. In this attempt they were worthily seconded 
by their successors, and favoured by the rivalry of the patrons of 
the other Universities and Scholae Illustres of the United Pro- 
vinces. And what was their success ? In the Batavian Nether- 
lands, when Leyden was founded, erudition was at a lower ebb 
than in most other countries ; and a generation had hardly 
passed away when the Dutch scholars, of every profession, were 
the most numerous and learned in the world. And this not from 
artificial encouragement and support, in superfluous foundations, 
affording at once the premium of erudition, and the leisure for 
its undisturbed pursuit, for of these the Provinces had none; 
not from the high endowments of academic chairs, for the mode- 
rate salaries of the professors were returned (it was calculated) 
more than twelve times to the community by the resort of 
foreign students alone ; but simply through the admirable organi- 
zation of all literary patronage, by which merit, and merit alone, 
was always sure of honour, and of an honoured, if not a lucrative 
appointment ; — a condition without which Colleges are nuisances, 
and Universities only organized against their end. Leyden has 
been surpassed by many other Universities, in the emoluments 
and in the number of her chairs, but has been equalled by none in 
the average eminence of her professors. Of these, the obscurer 
names would be luminaries in many other schools ; and from the 
circle of her twelve professors, and in an existence of two lnm- 

* [I may mention for the glory of England, (or rather of Ireland,) that 
Usher, when deprived of his Archiepiscopal emoluments, and a mere 
preacher in Lincoln's Inn, was invited to Leyden on the same honourable 
conditions. But Usher was, virtually, a Presbyterian.] 



GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. 365 

dred years, she can select a more numerous company of a higher 
erudition than can be found among the public teachers of any 
other seminary in the world. Far more, indeed, is admitted of 
Leyden by a learned German, himself an illustrious ornament of 
a rival University. " Hanc urbem," says Grasvius, (who, though 
a Protestant, was also invited by the Moderators of Padua,) — 
" hanc urbem prse ceteris nobilitavit, et super omnes extulit illus- 
trissimum et augustissimum illud sapientise et omnis doctrinae 
sacrarium, maximum orbis museum, in quoplures viri summi, qui 
principatum ingenii et eruditionis tenuerunt, floruere, quam in 
ceteris omnibus Europce Academiis." 

That Leyden and the other Dutch Universities do not now 
retain their former relative superiority, is not owing to any 
absolute decline in them, or corruption in their system of patron- 
age, but principally, if not entirely, to the fact, that as formerly 
that system wrought almost exclusively in their behalf, so it 
has now, for a considerable period, been turned very generally 
against them. The rise of the German Universities, in fact, 
necessarily determined a decline in the external prosperity of 
the Dutch. 

The Universities of the Empire, indeed, exhibit perhaps the 
most striking illustration of the exclusive efficacy of our prin- 
ciple. For centuries, these institutions had languished in an 
obscurity which showed the darker by contrast to the neigh- 
bouring splendour of the Batavian schools : when, by the simple 
application of the same curatorial patronage, with some advan- 
tages, and relieved from the religious restrictions which clogged 
its exercise in Holland, the Protestant Universities of Germany 
shone out at once with a lustre that threw almost into the 
shade the seminaries by which they had themselves been previ- 
ously eclipsed. 

The older German Universities, like those of France, the 
Netherlands, England, and Scotland, were constituted on the 
Parisian model ; consequently, all graduates became, in virtue of 
their degree, ordinary members of the several faculties, with 
equal rights in the government of the corporation, and equal 
privileges and obligations as academical teachers. But though 
the privilege of lecturing in the University was preserved to the 
graduates at large, a general dispensation of its compulsory 
exercise was in Germany, as in other countries, soon rendered 
possible by the endowment which took place of a certain number 



366 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

of lectureships on the most important subjects, with salaries 
arising from ecclesiastical benefices, or other permanent funds. 
Of these, which were usually twelve, at most twenty, in all, the 
holders were, of course, bound to gratuitous instruction ; for, 
throughout the European Universities the salary of an academi- 
cal teacher was always given (as a boon to the public, and more 
especially to the poor) in lieu of his exigible pastus. The devices 
by which this obligation has been, in various countries, variously 
{per fas, per nefas) eluded, would form a curious history. 

From towards the middle of the sixteenth century, no German 
University was founded without a complement of such salaried 
teachers, or, — as they began from the commencement of that 
century, distinctively to be denominated, — Professors ; and from 
this period, these appointments were also generally for life. These 
professors thus came to constitute the ordinary and permanent 
members of the faculties to which they belonged ; the other gra- 
duates soon lost, at least on equal terms, the privilege of academi- 
cal teaching, and were wholly excluded from the everyday admi- 
nistration of the University and its Faculties. 

To the salaried teachers thus established in the Universities, — 
to them collectively, in colleges, or in faculties, the privilege was 
generally conceded of choosing their own colleagues ; and this in 
the fond persuasion, as the deed of concession usually bore, that 
the election would be thus always determined with knowledge, 
and by the superior merit of the candidate. The princes and 
free cities, who, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, founded 
Universities and endowed Professorships, abandoned to the salaried 
teachers this right either entirely or in part. Leipsic and 
Tuebingen are examples of the one, Ingoldstadt of the other. In 
the sixteenth and following centuries, on the contrary, when the 
custom of endowing every public chair with a salary, and that for 
life, became more and more universal, no German University was 
erected in which an unfettered right of election was granted to 
the professors ; and as experience had now proved the pernicious 
policy of such a concession to the older Universities, it was also 
from them generally withdrawn. The Senate or the Faculties 
obtained at most the privilege of presenting candidates for ap- 
pointment. Of this Koenigsberg is an instance. But until the 
foundation of the University of Halle, in 1694, by the statutes of 
which, the chairs in the juridical and medical faculties were 
declared absolutely in the appointment of the Prince, (though 



GERMAN UNIVERSITIES— GOETTING EN. 367 

these bodies still ventured to interpose their advice ;) the selection 
and ordinary appointment of professors, under the various forms 
of presentation, commendation, proposal, or designation, was vir- 
tually exercised by the professorial bodies. There was, in fact, 
in the state, no other authority on whom this function peculiarly 
or responsibly devolved. It was the establishment of the Univer- 
sity of Goettingen, exactly a century ago, which necessitated a 
total and most salutary change of system. " The great Muench- 
hausen," says an illustrious professor of that seminary, " allowed 
our University the right of Presentation, of Designation, or of 
Recommendation, as little as the right of free Election ; for he 
was taught by experience, that although the faculties of Univer- 
sities may know the individuals best qualified to supply their 
vacant chairs, that they are seldom or never disposed to propose 
for appointment the worthiest within their knowledge." 

The length to which this article has already run, warns us not 
to attempt a contrast of the past and present state of the German 
Universities. On this interesting subject, " satius est silere quam 
parum dicere." By Germans themselves, they are admitted to 
have been incomparably inferior to the Dutch and Italian Uni- 
versities, until the foundation of the University of Goettingen. 
Muenchhausen was for Goettingen and the German Universities, 
what Douza was for Leyden and the Dutch. But with this dif- 
ference : — Leyden was the model on which the younger Univer- 
sities of the Republic were constructed ; Goettingen the model on 
which the older Universities of the Empire were reformed. Both 
were statesmen and scholars. Both proposed a high ideal for 
the schools founded under their auspices ; and both, as first cura- 
tors, laboured with paramount influence in realising this ideal for 
the same long period of thirty-two years. Under their patronage, 
Leyden and Goettingen took the highest place among the Uni- 
versities of Europe ; and both have only lost their relative supre- 
macy, by the application in other seminaries of the same measures 
which had at first determined their superiority. 

From the mutual relations of the seminaries, states, and people 
of the Empire, the resort to a German University has in general 
been always mainly dependent on its comparative excellence ; and 
as the interest of the several states was involved in the prosperity 
of their several Universities, the improvement of one of these 
schools necessarily occasioned the improvement of the others. 
No sooner, therefore, had Goettingen risen to a decided superio- 



388 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

rity through her system of curatorial patronage, and other subor- 
dinate improvements, than the different governments found it 
necessary to place their seminaries, as far as possible, on an equal 
footing. The nuisance of professorial recommendation, under 
which the Universities had so long pined, was generally abated ; 
and the few schools in which it has been tolerated, subsist only 
through their endowments, and stand as warning monuments of 
its effect. Compare wealthy Greifswalde with poor Halle. The vir- 
tual patronage was in general found best confided to a small body 
of curators ; though the peculiar circumstances of the country, 
and the peculiar organization of its machinery of government, 
have recently enabled at least one of the German states to con- 
centrate, without a violation of our principles, its academical 
patronage in a ministry of public instruction. This, however, we 
cannot now explain. It is universally admitted, that since their 
rise through the new system of patronage, the Universities of 
Germany have drawn into their sphere the highest talent of the 
nation ; that the new era in its intellectual life has been wholly 
determined by them ; as from them have emanated almost all the 
most remarkable products of German genius, in literature, erudi- 
tion, philosophy, and science. 

The matter of academical patronage has of course been dis- 
cussed in Germany, where education in general has engrossed 
greater attention than throughout the world beside ; and where, 
in particular, the merits of every feasible mode of choosing pro- 
fessors have been tried by a varied experience. But in that 
country the question has been hardly ever mooted. All are at 
one. Every authority supports the policy of concentrating the 
academical patronage in an extra-academical body, small, intelli- 
gent, and responsible; and we defy the allegation of a single 
modern opinion in favour of distributing that patronage among a 
numerous body of electors, — far less of leaving it, in any circum- 
stances, modification, or degree, under the influence of the pro- 
fessorial college. The same unanimity has also, we have noticed, 
always prevailed in Holland. As a specimen of the state of 
opinion in Germany on this decided point, we shall cite only 
three witnesses, all professors, all illustrious authors, and all of 
the very highest authority, in a question of learned education or 
of academical usage. These are Michaelis, Meincrs, and Schleicr- 
macher. 

Michaelis. — " It is inexpedient to allow the choice of academical teachers 



TESTIMONIES OF MICHAELIS AND OF MEINERS. 369 

to the professors themselves, be*it either to the whole concilium or to the 
several faculties; and those Universities which exercise this right, pay the 
penalty of the privilege. A choice of this description is always ill made by 
a numerous body, and a single intelligent judge is better than a multitude of 
electors. - - - - In an election by professors, it is also to be feared 
that partiality, nepotism, complaisance to a colleague in expectation of a re- 
turn, would be all-powerful ; and were it only a patriotic preference of 
natives to strangers, still would the election be perverted. There is, more- 
over, a painful circumstance on which I am loath to touch. It is not im- 
possible that the most intelligent judge among the professors, one in the en- 
joyment of distinguished influence and reputation, may, in the appointment 
of a colleague, look that this reputation and influence be not eclipsed, and 
consequently, to the exclusion of all higher talent, confine his choice to such 
inferior qualifications as he can regard without dread of rivalry. Professors 
may, it is true, be profitably consulted ; but no reliance should be placed on 
the advice of those who have any counter interest to the new professor. - - 
- - The direst evil in the choice of professors, and the certain prelude to 
the utter degradation of a University, is nepotism ; that is, if professors, 
whether directly through election, or indirectly through recommendation 
and advice, should succeed in obtaining academical appointments for sons, 
sons-in-law, &c, of inferior learning. The man who in this manner becomes 
extraordinary professor will, without merit, rise also to the higher office ; and 
the job which is tolerated on one occasion, must, from collegial friendship 
and even equitable reciprocity, be practised on others." (Raisonnement ueber 
die protestantischen Universitaeten in Deutschland, (1770) ii. p. 412.) 

Meiners. — u It should be no matter of regret that faculties have now lost 
the privilege of electing their members, or of recommending them for ap- 
pointment. Certain as it is, that each faculty is best competent to deter- 
mine what qualifications are most wanted for its vacant chairs, and who are 
the persons possessing these qualifications in the highest eminence ; certain 
also is it, that in very many cases the faculties would neither elect nor re- 
commend the individual deserving of preference ; — that is, in all cases where 
they might apprehend that the worthiest would prejudice the interests, or 
throw into the shade the reputation, of themselves or friends. - - - Let 
academical patrons be cautious as possible, and let them consult whom they 
may in the choice of public teachers, it cannot but happen that they should 
commit occasional mistakes. And when such occur, then is it that we are 
sure to hear — ' This could not have happened, had the University or 
Faculty been consulted.' Yet far worse and far more frequent errors 
would occur, did the faculties possess the right of free election, or did 
the higher authorities only choose out of a list presented by the pro- 
fessors. - - - - 

" The actual choice and confirmation of public teachers is now, in most 
Universities, in the hands of the Prince, and of the Curators appointed by 
him ; in very few is it exercised by the Universities themselves, or by their 
several faculties and functionaries. The Universities in which teachers are 
chosen and confirmed by the Prince, or by the curators nominated by him, 
are distinguished among themselves by this difference ;— that in some, the 
whole professorial body, or the several faculties, have either the right or the 

2a 



370 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

permission to propose, or at least recommend, candidates for the vacant 
places ; and that, in others, they have not. The questions thus arise : — Is 
it better that the Universities themselves, or those in authority over them, 
should elect the professors ? Is it better that the University or academical 
bodies should or should not have the right or permission to propose or re- 
commend for appointment ? 

" It does not admit of doubt, that the choice of professors by extra-acade- 
mical governors, is preferable to their election by the senatus or faculties. 
Curators, however learned they may be, still cannot be so familiar with 
every department of erudition, as to be able, on every vacancy, to determine, 
from their own knowledge, what individuals ought to be taken into consider- 
ation, and who of these is best deserving of preference. To this the most 
learned professor would be equally incompetent as the academical curators. 
It is not, however, difficult for well-disposed and enlightened curators to ob- 
tain the information which they themselves cannot possibly possess. They 
reside, in general, either in great cities, or, at least, in towns inhabited by 
men of learning, intimately acquainted with every branch of literature. 
They likewise in general personally know, in the Universities over which 
they preside, individuals of approved erudition, who can either afford advice 
themselves, or obtain it from others with whom they are acquainted. In 
either way, it is easy to ascertain both the number and the relative qualifi- 
cations of those who would accept the office. This must be admitted ; nor 
can it be denied, that curators will in almost every instance elect those re- 
commended to them as the worthiest, by the best informed and most impar- 
tial advisers. Curators have no other, at least no stronger interest, than the 
maintenance and increase of the prosperity of the University intrusted to 
their care. This interest induces them, in the academical appointments, 
rigidly to scrutinize the qualifications of candidates, and to accord the pre- 
ference only to the most deserving. The individuals out of whom they 
choose are not of their connexions, and seldom even their personal acquaint- 
ances. There is thus rarely any ground of partiality or disfavour. If cura- 
tors elect according to merit, they enjoy, beside the inestimable approbation 
of a good conscience, the exclusive honour of their choice. Do they allow 
themselves to be influenced by unsifted recommendations, to choose another 
than the worthiest,— they expose themselves, by their neglect of duty, to pub- 
lic and private reprobation. 

"Academical senates and faculties possessing the privilege of self- 
election, have at least this advantage over curators of Universities, that 
they are able, from their own knowledge, to appreciate the merit of 
candidates. But, on the other hand, they in this are inferior to curators, 
that we can rarely allow them credit for the will to elect him whom they 
are themselves conscious is best entitled to the place. The worthiest 
are either opponents or rivals of the electors themselves, or of their 
friends. The electors, or their friends, have relations or favourites for 
whom they are desirous to provide. In most cases, likewise, the very inte- 
rest of the electors excludes the most deserving, and prescribes the choice 
of an inferior candidate. Impartial elections can only take place in aca- 
demical senates and faculties, when a chair is to be filled for which there 
is no competition, and the prosperity of which is for the direct and imme- 



TESTIMONIES OF MEINERS AND OF SCHLEIERMACHER. 371 

diate advantage of the electors at large. It will be granted that the case 
occurs but seldom. As long, therefore, as we must admit that academical 
senates and faculties are more frequently partial than curators of Universi- 
ties are ill-informed, so long must we maintain, that professors should be 
elected by a superior authority, and not by the University itself. This, 
history and experience have already for centuries determined. 

" Proposals and recommendations of candidates by senates and faculties, 
are a minor evil to actual election ; but. still an evil which should be 
abolished or avoided. The same causes which determine the election of infe- 
rior merit, must operate against the proposal and recommendation of supe- 
rior. Where it is the custom that the senate or faculty proposes a certain 
number of candidates, out of which the higher authorities make choice, there 
arises, if not an open nepotism, at least a provincial spirit of preference, and 
a secret conspiracy against foreigners, pernicious to a University. If the 
higher authorities, therefore, confine their choice to those thus recommended, 
they will always find that the vacant chairs are not provided with the most 
eminent professors. On the other hand, if they disregard their recommenda- 
tion, they afford the academical bodies cause of umbrage, and render them 
the sworn enemies of the professor actually appointed ; complaints are raised 
of broken privileges ; and he who is forced on them through such a breach, 
becomes the object of odium or persecution. It is, therefore, highly advis- 
able, that the founder, and those in authority over Universities, should 
remain unfettered in the choice of professors ; and that in the exercise of 
this function, they should obtain the advice of those, within and without 
their Universities, who will afford them the most impartial and enlightened 
counsel." (Venvaltung deutscher Universitaeten, (1801), i. p. 124, ii. p. 35.) 

Schleiermacher. — " The University itself must certainly best know its 
want, when a vacancy occurs, or the opportunity offers of extending the 
sphere of its instruction ; and as we are bound to presume in its members a 
knowledge of all that appears of any scientific importance in the country, 
they must likewise know from whence to obtain wherewithal to supply this 
want. But, alas ! no one would on that account be inclined to accord to a 
University the choice of its teachers. Universities are, one and all, so infa- 
mous for a spirit of petty intrigue, that were this privilege once conceded, 
what rational being is there who, from their devotion to party, from the pas- 
sions excited in their literary feuds, and from their personal connexions, 
could not anticipate the pernicious consequences ? " (Gedanken ueber Uni- 
versitaeten in deutschem Sinn, ("1808), p. 97.) 

Having thus generalized the principles which govern a well- 
organized system of academic patronage, and historically shown 
that these principles have been actually applied in all the most 
distinguished Universities, we shall now conclude our discussion 
by considering the modes of appointing professors in use in Scot- 
land. 

To say nothing of the special patronage of a few individual 
chairs, the merits of which we cannot at present pause to con- 
sider, the general systems of academical patronage here preva- 



372 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

lent, are three ; the trust being deposited in the hands either of 
a Municipal Magistracy, — of the Professorial body itself, — or of 
the Crown. 

The first of these systems, though not unknown in one of the 
other Universities, is preponderant only in that of Edinburgh, 
where the far greater number of professors are elected imme- 
diately by the suffrages of the thirty-three members of the Town 
Council. 

This system is generally and justly admitted to be greatly 
preferable to the other two. An admission, however, of the kind, 
proves aught rather than the absolute excellence of the method. 
It is melancholy indeed that such a system should be tolerated in 
our country ; still more melancholy that it must be lauded as the 
best we have. The utmost that can be said in its favour is, that 
compared with the other two, it is of itself less disposed to evil, 
and more capable of being inclined to good. 

A body like the Edinburgh Town Council, as it was, fulfils 
none of the conditions of a well-organized board of academical 
patrons. From their education and rank in society, they were, 
on the average, wholly destitute of that information and intelli- 
gence which such patrons ought to possess ; they were a collec- 
tion of individuals, — numerous, — transitory, — obscure ; and the 
function itself was an appendage wholly accidental to their office. 

Such a body of patrons was wholly incapable of an active 
exercise of their trust. Their unintelligence, numbers, and fluc- 
tuating association, prevented them from anticipating and following 
out any uniform and systematic measures. No general principle 
determined among them a unity of will. They could not attempt 
an extensive survey for a discovery of the highest qualifications ; 
nor make a tender of the appointment to those who might accept 
what they would not solicit. Their sphere of choice was thus 
limited to actual candidates ; and the probabilities of success again 
always limited candidates to those whose merits were supported 
or supplied by local and adventitious circumstances. Even in the 
narrow circle of candidates, the choice of the civic patrons was 
always passive ; and its character for good or ill, wholly depen- 
dent on the nature of some external determination. The judgment 
of a proper body of patrons should be higher than that of the 
community at large ; it should guide, not merely follow, public 
opinion. This, however, was not to be expected from a body of 
burgesses ; in fact, it has been the only merit of the Town Conn- 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY MUNICIPALITIES. 373 

cil of Edinburgh, either claimed or accorded, that public opinion 
was not without a certain weight in their decision. But public 
opinion is not unfrequently at fault ; it favours the popular and 
superficial, not the learned and profound. The qualifications of a 
professor are frequently wholly beyond its cognisance ; and still 
more frequently the qualifications of candidates are unknown. 
Public opinion was thus either not expressed in favour of any 
candidate, or it was divided ; and the patrons solely abandoned 
to accident, or the impulsion of some less salutary influence, — an 
influence frequently found omnipotent, even against public opinion 
itself. 

The Town Council of Edinburgh was, in fact, peculiarly exposed 
to have its patronage corrupted through a variety of channels ; 
and the history of the University shows, that the highest merit, 
and the public opinion of that merit most emphatically pronounced, 
have never, in a single instance, prevailed, when a perverse influ- 
ence has been adequately brought to bear on the electors. Nor 
could it possibly be otherwise. A body of electors more com- 
pletely relieved of responsibility, and the consciousness of respon- 
sibility, could scarcely be imagined. We had here a body, itself 
the creature, and consequently the pliant instrument, of favour, 
intrigue, and corruption. The members of this body were men, 
in general, wholly unable to represent to themselves the high 
importance of their decision, or to be actuated by any refined 
conception of their duty ; nor could public reprobation be felt at 
all, when the responsibility was so pulverized among a passing 
multitude of nameless individuals. Such a body was, of all others, 
liable to be led astray from their duty by those who had an 
interest in perverting their choice. " It is remarkable," says Dr 
Chalmers, " that some of the chief deviations by Magistrates and 
Councils in the exercise of this trust, have been brought about by 
the influence of leading men in the Church or in the University." 
This influence, which was long as systematically as perniciously 
exerted, operated equally to the corruption of the Church and of 
the University ; and the last, worst form of academical patronage, 
that by the professorial body itself, was thus covertly at work, 
without even the trifling checks which accompanied its open exer- 
cise. Itself the breath of party, the Town Council hardly pre- 
tended to impartiality when politics disturbed its choice ; and the 
most transcendent claims were of no avail against the merits of a 
municipal relationship. A large proportion of the electors were 



374 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

necessarily in dependent relations ; and some hardly above the 
condition of paupers. They were thus wholly incapacitated from 
resisting the various sinister influences which assailed their inte- 
grity ; and even direct bribery, which is known to have been 
sometimes tried, was probably not always unsuccessful. It was 
thus, only when left to themselves, and to the guidance of public 
opinion, that the civic patrons could be trusted ; — only when the 
powers which commanded their voices had no sufficient interest 
in warping their decision. The fact, that they not only tolerated, 
but expected, the personal solicitations of candidates and their 
friends, proves also, of itself, that they had no true conception of 
their office ; — that they thought of granting a favour, not merely 
of performing a duty. Patrons who exercise their power only as 
a trust, will spurn all canvassing as an insult, if candidates do not 
feel it as a disgrace. Judges were once courted in this and other 
countries in a similar manner. We look back on such a practice 
as on a marvel of political barbarism ; and it will not, we trust, be 
long until we recollect with equal wonder the abomination of soli- 
cited trustees. 

That municipal magistrates could possibly exercise, of them- 
selves, the function of academic patrons, seems in no other coun- 
try to have been imagined ; and even in Edinburgh, the right of 
choice was originally limited by conditions which the Town Coun- 
cil have only latterly evaded. Their election formerly expressed 
only the issue of a public concourse of candidates, and disputation 
in the Latin tongue ; and the decision, too, we believe, was only 
valid when sanctioned by the approval of the Presbytery. We 
recollect only two foreign Universities in which the municipality 
were patrons, — Lou vain and Altdorf. In the former, this right, 
which extended only to certain chairs, was controlled by the facul- 
ties, whose advice was to be always previously taken ; and the 
decline of that great and wealthy seminary was mainly determined 
by its vicious patronage, both as vested in the University and in 
the Town. Altdorf, on the other hand, founded and maintained 
by the free city of Nuremberg, was about the poorest University 
in Germany, and long one of the most eminent. Its whole endow- 
ments never rose above L.800 a-year ; and till the period of its 
declension, the professors of Altdorf make at least as distinguished 
a figure in the history of philosophy, as those of all the eight 
Universities of the British Empire together. On looking closely 
into its constitution, the anomaly is at once solved. The patrician 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY MUNICIPALITIES. 375 

Senate of Nuremberg were not certainly less qualified for academi- 
cal patrons than the Town Council of Edinburgh ; but they were 
too intelligent and patriotic to attempt the exercise of such a 
function. The nomination of professors, though formally ratified 
by the senate, was virtually made by a board of four curators ; 
and what is worthy of remark, so long as curatorial patronage 
was a singularity in Germany, Altdorf maintained its relative pre- 
eminence, — losing it only when a similar mean was adopted in the 
more favoured Universities of the Empire. 

These observations are, in their whole extent, applicable only 
to the old Town Council; but it is manifest that all the principal 
circumstances which incapacitated that body, under its former 
constitution, for a competent exercise of academic patronage, con- 
tinue still to operate under its present ; and if some minor objec- 
tions are removed, others, perhaps of even greater moment, have 
arisen. On these, however, we cannot at present touch. Indeed, 
it is only in a country far behind in all that regards the theory 
and practice of education, that the notion of intrusting a body like 
a municipal magistracy with such a trust, would not be treated 
with derision ; and we have so high an opinion of the intelligence 
and good intentions of the present Town Council, that we even 
confidently expect them to take the lead in depositing in proper 
hands that important part of their public trust, which they are 
unable adequately to discharge themselves. [But alas !] 

Their continuance as patrons would, in fact, seal the downfall 
of the University of Edinburgh ; unless, what is now impossible, 
systems of patronage still more vicious should continue to keep 
down the other Universities of Scotland to their former level. 
All of these are superior to Edinburgh in endowments ; and if the 
one decisive superiority which Edinburgh has hitherto enjoyed 
over them, in the comparative excellence of her patronage, be 
reversed in their favour, the result is manifest. 

From the best of our Scottish systems of academical patronage, 
we now pass to the worst ; and public opinion is, even in this 
country, too unanimous in condemnation, to make it necessary to 
dwell upon its vices. We mean that of self-patronage. 

In the unqualified form in which it has so long prevailed in 
Scotland, it was tried, in the darkness of the middle ages, in a very 
few of the continental Universities ; and in these the experiment 
was brief. In an extremely modified shape, and under circum- 
stances which greatly counteracted its evils, it was tolerated for 



376 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

a considerable period in the German Universities ; experience, 
however, proved its inexpediency under every mitigation, and it 
has been long in that country, as we have shown, absolutely and 
universally condemned. [See the authorities above, p. 368 — 371.] 
As established in Scotland, this system violates, or rather 
reverses, almost every condition by which the constitution of a 
board of patrons ought to be regulated. — In the first place, by 
conjoining in the same persons the right of appointment and the 
right of possession, it tends to confound patronage with property, 
and thus to deaden in the trustee the consciousness of his charac- 
ter ; in fact, to foster in him the feeling, that, in the exercise of 
his function, he is not discharging an imperative duty, but doing 
arbitrarily what he chooses " with his own." — In the second place, 
as it disposes the patron to forget that he is a trustee, so it also 
primes him with every incentive to act as a proprietor. Natural 
affection to children and kindred;* personal friendship and enmity ; 
party, (and was there ever a University without this curse ?) ; jea- 
lousy of superior intelligence and learning, operating the stronger 
the lower the University is degraded ; the fear of an unaccommo- 
dating integrity ; and finally, the acquiescence even of opposite 
parties in a job, with the view of a reciprocity ; — these and other 
motives effectually co-operate to make the professorial patron 
abuse his public duty to the furtherance of his private ends. The 
single motive for bestowing on professors the power of nominating 
their colleagues, was the silly persuasion that they were the per- 
sons at once best able to appreciate ability, and the most interested 
in obtaining it. If this were true, — if it were not the reverse of 
truth, we should surely find our professorial patrons in Scotland, 
like the curators of foreign universities, looking anxiously around, 
on every vacancy, for the individual of highest eminence, and 
making every exertion to induce his acceptance of the chair. But 
has it been heard that this primary act of a patron's duty was 
ever yet performed by a college of professorial patrons ? In the 
nature of things it could hardly be. For why ? This would be an 

* " Hence the hereditary successions in colleges which are thus patronised, 
— the firm and infrangible compacts, which sometimes last for generations, 
cemented as they are by the affinities of blood and relationship, — the decay- 
ing lustre of chairs once occupied by men of highest celebrity and talent, but 
the very ascendancy of whose influence when living, or of whose names after 
they were dead, effected the transmission of their offices to a list of descen- 
dants." — Dr Chalmers. 



ACADEMICAL SELF-PATRONAGE. 377 

overt admission, that they were mere trustees performing a duty, 
not proprietors conferring a favour. Were the highest qualifica- 
tions once recognised as the sole rule ; why not make its applica- 
tion universal ? But then, the standard of professorial competence 
would be inconveniently raised ; the public would expect that the 
reputation of the University should not be allowed to fall ; and the 
chairs could therefore no longer be dealt about as suited the pri- 
vate interest of the patrons. The private interest of the patrons, 
therefore, determined an opposite policy. The standard of pro- 
fessorial competence must be kept down — it seldom needed to be 
lowered — to the average level of their relatives and partisans. Not 
only must no invitation be given to men of reputation, they must 
be disgusted from appearing as candidates. The value of the chairs, 
as places of honour, must be reduced ; that, as places of emolu- 
ment, they might not, and that in an unlearned country, be beyond 
the reach of ordinary men. Instead of receiving an unsolicited 
call to take his seat among the members of an illustrious body, the 
man of highest reputation, to obtain the chance even of a chair, 
must condescend to beg the lowered office as a favour, from a 
crowd of undistinguished individuals, to obtain whose voices was 
no credit, and not to obtain them would still be felt as a disgrace ; 
and submit to the humiliation of being fellow-candidate of all and 
sundry, whom the humble vanity of standing for a chair, or per- 
sonal and party interest with the electors, called — and with pro- 
bable success — into the field. To be left to divide the cake in the 
shade, has been the aim of all professorial patronage. We do not 
assert, that under this system no men of distinguished merit have 
illustrated our Universities ; — far from it ; but we assert that of 
all others it tends to make celebrity the exception, obscurity the 
rule. And of the small number of great names to which the 
professorial patronage can lay claim, some conquered their ap- 
pointments by other reasons than their merits, and more took 
their patrons and the world by surprise in their subsequent repu- 
tation. We know something of the history of foreign Universities, 
and something, at least by negation, of the history of our own. 
And this we affirm, that if a premium were given to the Univer- 
sity which could exhibit among its professors the largest propor- 
tion of least distinguished names, the Scottish Universities, where 
self-election is prevalent, would have it only to contend for among 
themselves. 

We may here anticipate an objection we have often heard, that, 



378 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

however bad in theory, the patronage of the Scottish Universities 
is found, in practice, to work well ; these seminaries fully accom- 
plishing their end, as shown by the flourishing state of learning 
in the country. 

Assuming, with the objector, the effect produced, as a test of 
the instrument producing,* this patronage must on the contrary 
be granted to have wrought almost worse in practice, than rea- 
soning could have led us to anticipate ; erudition, in every higher 
acceptation, being in Scotland at a lower pass than in any other 
country almost of Europe. — Without, we think, any overweening 
patriotism, we may assert, that no people in modern times has 
evinced more natural ability than our own ; and in all the depart- 
ments of knowledge where intellectual vigour, rather than exten- 
sive erudition, may command success, the Scotch are at least not 
inferior to any other nation in the world. " Animi illis," says 
Barclay, " in qusecunque studia inclinant, mirifico successu inclyti ; 
ut nullis major patientia castrorum, vel audacia pugnse, et Musae 
nunquam delicatius habeant, quam cum inciderunt in Scotos." 
Nor, assuredly, have they shown an incapacity for the highest 
scholarship, when placed in circumstances disposing them to its 
cultivation. On the contrary, no other people have achieved so 
much in this department in proportion to their means. From the 
petty portion of her scanty population, whose education was not 
stunted in her native seminaries, Scotland can show at least some 
three or four more consummate masters of a Latin style, and that 
both in prose and verse, than all the other nations of the British 
Empire can exhibit, with ten times her population, and so many 
boasted schools. Nature gives ability, education gives learning ; 
and that a people of such peculiar aptitude for every study, should 
remain behind all others in those departments and degrees of 
erudition, for the special cultivation of which Universities were 
established, proves, by the most appropriate of evidence, that 
those of Scotland are, in their present state, utterly unqualified 
for the higher purposes of their existence. Of these correlative 
facts, we shall supply two only, but these, significant illustrations. 
[On these compare also Ed. No. ii.] 

The first. It will be admitted, that a very trifling fraction of 

* Though the principal, we do not, of course, hold that a good academical 
patronage is the only condition of high learning in a country. An exposition 
of all the concurrent causes of this result would form the subject of nn 
important discussion. 



SCOTLAND LOW IN LEARNING. 379 

the cultivated population of any country can receive its education 
and literary impulsion in foreign lands ; consequently, if the semi- 
naries of Scotland were not incomparably inferior, as instruments 
of erudition, that the immense majority of Scottish scholars must 
have owed their education exclusively to Scottish schools. 

Now, on this standard, what is the case ? Of Scottish scholars, 
all of the highest eminence, and far more than nine-tenths of those 
worthy of the name of scholar at all, have been either educated 
in foreign seminaries, or their tastes, and the direction of their 
studies, determined in the society of foreign learned men. 

Nor is the second illustration less remarkable. It will be admit- 
ted, that the erudition of a national (we do not mean merely esta- 
blished) church, affords not only a fair, but the most favourable 
criterion of the erudition of a nation. For, in the first place ; 
Theology, comprehending (or rather being itself contained in) a 
wider sphere of scholarship than any other learned profession, 
and its successful cultivation necessarily proportioned to the 
degree in which that scholarship is applied ; it follows, that the 
Theology of a country can never transcend, and will rarely fall 
beneath, the level of its erudition. Tn the second; the clergy 
form every where the most numerous body of literary men ; con- 
sequently, more than any other, express the general diffusion of 
literary accomplishment throughout a people. In the third ; the 
clergy or those educated for the church, constitute the class from 
which tutors, schoolmasters, and professors, are principally taken. 
Their proficiency and example thus react most powerfully and 
extensively, either to raise and keep up learning, or to prevent its 
rising among all orders and professions. In the fourth; as almost 
exclusively bred in the schools and Universities of their country, 
they reflect more fairly than the rest of the educated ranks, the 
excellences and defects of the native seminaries. And in the fifth ; 
as their course of academical study is considerably longer than 
that of the other learned professions, they must be viewed as even 
a highly favourable specimen of what their native seminaries can 
accomplish. 

Now, in Scotland, on this criterion, what is the result ? Simply 
this : Though perhaps the country in Europe where religious 
interests have always maintained the strongest hold, Scotland, in 
the history of European Theology, has, for nearly two centuries, 
no name, no place. For nearly two centuries, the home-bred 
clergy of Scotland, established and dissenting, among their count- 



380 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

less publications of a religious character, some displaying great 
and various talent, have, with two [one], not illustrious exceptions, 
contributed not a single work to the European stock of theological 
erudition ; and for an equal period, they have not produced a 
single scholar on a level with a fifth-rate philologer of most other 
countries. In these respects, many a dorf in Germany or Holland 
has achieved far more than the broad realm of Scotland. A com- 
parison of the Scotch and English Churches affords a curious 
illustration in point. In the latter, the clergy have a tolerable 
classical training, but for ages have enjoyed, we may say, no 
theological education at all. In the former, the clergy must 
accomplish the longest course of theological study prescribed in 
any country, but with the worst and shortest classical preparation. 
Yet in theological erudition, what a contrast do the two Churches 
exhibit ! And this, simply because a learned scholar can easily 
slide into a learned divine, without a special theological educa- 
tion ; whereas no theological education can make a man a competent 
divine, who is not a learned scholar ; — theology being, in a human 
sense, only a philology and history, applied by philosophy. — But 
again. In other countries, the clergy, or those educated for the 
church, as a class, take the highest place in the higher depart- 
ments of learning. Scotland, on the contrary, is singular in this, 
that all her scholars of any eminence, have, for almost two cen- 
turies, been found exclusively among the laity, and these, as we 
have noticed, rarely educated in her native institutions. 

The third and last mode of appointing to academical offices in 
Scotland, is nomination by the Crown. — There being no special 
department, in our Government, for public instruction, this patron- 
age has fallen to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. 
The defects of this mode of appointment are sufficiently obvious. 
Here a great deal certainly depends on the intelligence and libe- 
rality of the individual Minister, to counteract the natural defects 
of the system. But, even under the best and most impartial 
Minister, it can accomplish its end only in a very precarious and 
unsatisfactory manner. The Minister is transitory ; the choice of 
professors is a function wholly different in kind from the ordinary 
duties of his department ; is not of very frequent recurrence ; and 
concerns a distant quarter of the empire, where the Universities 
are situated, and the candidates generally found. The Minister 
cannot, therefore, be presumed to think of specially qualifying 
himself for this contingent fraction of his duty. He must rely on 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY THE CROWN. 381 

the information of others. But can he obtain impartial informa- 
tion, or be expected to take the trouble necessary in seeking it ? 
On the other hand, he will be besieged by the solicitations of 
candidates and their supporters. Testimonials, collected by the 
applicant himself among his friends, and strong in proportion to 
the partialities of the testifier, and the lowness of the criterion by 
which he judges, will be showered in, and backed by political and 
personal recommendations. If he trust to such information, he 
limits his patronage to those who apply for the appointment ; and 
as all certificates of competence are in general equally transcendent, 
he will naturally allow inferior considerations to incline his pre- 
ference among candidates all ostensibly the very best. 

To lift this patronage out of the sphere of political partiality, 
and to secure precise and accurate information from an unbiassed, 
intelligent, and responsible authority, is what every patriotic 
Minister of the Crown would be desirous to effect. But this can 
be best accomplished by organizing a board of Curators (the name 
is nothing) for each University, on the principles of patronage we 
have explained ; whose province would be to discover, to compare, 
to choose, to recommend, and to specify the grounds of their pre- 
ference, to the Minister, with whom the definitive nomination 
would remain, — a nomination, however, which could be only formal, 
if the curators conscientiously fulfilled the duties of their trust. 
How beneficially these authorities would reciprocally act as checks 
and counter checks, stimuli and counter-stimuli, is apparent. By 
this arrangement, the Crown would exchange an absolute for a 
modified patronage in those chairs now in its presentation ; but 
this modified patronage would be extended over all others. The 
definitive nomination would certainly be no longer of value as a 
petty mean of ministerial influence ; but the dignity of the Crown 
would thus be far better consulted in making it the supreme and 
general guardian of the good of all the Universities. Nor would 
the system of curatorial boards be superseded, were a separate 
department of public instruction to be established in the admini- 
stration of the State. On the contrary, in most countries where 
this organization of government prevails, the University curators 
form one of the most useful parts of its* machinery ; and nothing 
contributes more to perfect the curatorial system itself, than the 
consciousness of the curator that his recommendation is always 
strictly scrutinized by an intelligent and well-informed Ministry, 
before being carried into effect. 



382 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

In the present article, we have limited our discussion to the 
general conditions of a good system of academic patronage. We 
do not, therefore, now touch on the difficult and important ques- 
tion — How is a board of academic patrons and governors to be best 
constituted under the particular circumstances of this country? * 

* [As in part supplying an answer to this important question, it may 
not be improper here to extract that portion of the Evidence given by me in 
the course of the same year, when examined by " The Commissioners ap- 
pointed to inquire into the state of Municipal Corporations in Scotland." In 
Appendix III. will be found likewise a relative extract from the General 
Keport of these Commissioners, presented to both Houses of Parliament. 

" The best mode of organizing a board of Curatorial Patrons for the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh, appears to me the only point of any considerable diffi- 
culty ; and this because we have here not to deal merely with principles in 
the abstract, but to determine what, under the special circumstances of the 
case, is the highest point of perfection which we can practically realize. 

" But before stating what appears to me the most expedient plan of consti- 
tuting such a board, I would premise that a board of curators, almost any 
how elected, and of only ordinary intelligence and probity, would, if small, 
and not of a transitory continuance in office, be always greatly preferable as 
academical governors and patrons to the passing mob of civic councillors, 
either under the past or present constitution of the city ; because such a body 
could hardly fail of being more competent to their office, from greater 
average understanding, from their not being disabled for active and harmo- 
nious measures towards obtaining University teachers of the very highest 
qualifications, and from their standing prominently forward to public view, 
and consequently acting under a powerful feeling of responsibility in the 
exercise of their trust. But merely to improve on so vicious a system of 
patronage as the present would be doing very little ; and, though a small 
board of curators could not but be preferable to the town-council, still the 
all-important question remains, — How is such a board, of the highest possible 
excellence, to be most securely obtained? 

" In attempting a feasible solution of this problem, we must accommodate 
our plan to existing circumstances, and construct our building with the 
materials that lie around us. These are certainly not the best possible ; but 
they seem to me not inadequate to the end in view ; and the difficulty of 
obtaining better, if such could actually be obtained, would probably far more 
than overbalance the superior advantages they might otherwise promise. 
Taking, therefore, the public bodies, such as we find them in this city, and 
employing the principal of these as the means of organizing a board of acade- 
mical Curators, the following appears to me the plan which would probably 
accomplish, to the highest practical perfection, the end in view, i.e. the elec- 
tion of Curators competent to their duty, and actuated by the strongest mo- 
tives to its fulfilment. 

" Let the Curators be elected for a fixed term of years, say seven ; and there 
may either be a general septennial election, or each Curator may continue in 



HOW ACADEMICAL CURATORS TO BE HERE APPOINTED? 383 

office the full term, from the actual date of his appointment. Curators to be 
re-eligible ; it being also understood that they ought to be re-elected, if their 
conduct merit approbation. 

" When a vacancy occurs, a writ to be issued from , requiring each of the 

six following bodies to elect, and their president to return to , as elected by 

a majority of at least two-thirds, a Delegate, qualified (as the writ should bear) 
by his intelligence, probity, and general liberality, to concur in electing a 
Curator or Curators of the University. These bodies are, 1. The Faculty of 
Advocates ; 2. The Society of Writers to the Signet ; 3. The Royal College 
of Physicians ; 4. The Royal College of Surgeons ; 5. The Presbytery of 
Edinburgh (or, perhaps, under certain regulations, the Synod or General 
Assembly) ; 6. The Town Council. The Delegate to be either a member of 
the constituent body or not, but never its ordinary presiding functionary. In 
the case of the Town Council, the delegate ought certainly not to be a mem- 
ber of that body, and perhaps it would be better if the same rule were even 
extended to the others. On his appointment the Delegate to make a solemn 
declaration, before a meeting of his constituents, — " that he has not canvas- 
sed for the appointment himself, or sanctioned any canvassing by others on 
his behalf ; that he feels no sense of obligation to vote for any individual ; 
and that, in the election, he will be solely biassed by his honest conviction 
that the object of his choice is the person best qualified to discharge with 
intelligence, and without personal, political, or religious partiality, the func- 
tions of Academical Curator." Should any of the bodies fail in returning a 
Delegate by the requisite majority, the complement of six to be supplied by 
allowing one or other of the remaining bodies, in what order, and under 
what regulations may be deemed expedient, to elect a second Delegate. The 
Delegate to be ineligible to an academical chair by the Curators whom he 
has concurred in electing, and perhaps, likewise his sons, sons-in-law, and 
brothers, or only under certain restrictions, as, for instance, only by a una- 
nimous choice of the Curators. 

" The Delegates to report their elections of Curators to the relative Minister 
of State, specifying the votes of each Delegate for each Curator ; and each 
Delegate also to report his own vote to his constituents. If the choice be 
unanimous, the Minister bound to confirm the nomination ; but otherwise, 
it shall be in his power to order a new election of Delegates and Curator : 
but should the same Curator be again returned, his appointment to be hereby 
determined. 

" Ineligible to the curatorial office, — peers, the lords president and jus- 
tice-clerk, professors, clergymen, and practising medical men ; and not more 
than two Curators at most to be elected from the judges of the supreme 
court. 

" Before entering on their function, an instruction for their conduct in office, 
ratified by his Majesty and Parliament, to be accepted and signed by the 
Curators. This instruction should, inter alia, anxiously prescribe that they 
are not (as has in this country hitherto been the case) merely to bestow the 
vacant chairs on one of those who may happen to come forward as candi- 
dates ; but that they are to look carefully around for the person of the high- 
est competence, and make to him a tender of the appointment, even at the 



384 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

risk of it being declined. They should also make an articulate oath to the 
upright discharge of their duty, and this in the most impressive form, as 
before the whole Court of Session, specially commissioned for the purpose by 
the King. 

" As formerly stated, the Curators, on each designation of professor, to 
make a detailed report of their choice and its grounds to the Minister, stat- 
ing whether it were unanimous or not, and the names of the majority and 
minority. If unanimous, their designation to necessitate the confirmation ; 
but if not, then the Minister may remit the matter for reconsideration to the 
Curators, and even ultimately suspend his ratification. On this last event, 
(which is not of probable occurrence,) the majority of the Curators must, of 
course, resign ; but if the new Curators, hereupon appointed, (whether the 
same individuals be elected or not,) repeat the former designation, in that 
case, their choice to be held as final, and the royal confirmation not to be 
refused. 

" The reasons of the different parts of this plan are sufficiently obvious. — 
The primary elective bodies, though none of them the best possible, are still 
sufficiently numerous, and sufficiently different, to neutralise any partial 
interests with which they might severally be infected, and each will, conse- 
quently, be induced to act only for the benefit Of the public, in which they 
themselves always participate. Then, as the Delegates are to be chosen by 
a large majority, no one is likely to be proposed, far less to be elected, who 
does not enjoy the general confidence of the electors apart from all considera- 
tions of party. — The writ, and its tenor, takes the election of Delegate out 
of the ordinary routine, gives it a certain solemnity, and puts the electors 
on their honour ; while this is still more efficiently done with the Delegates 
by the public declaration they must make on accepting their commission. — 
The report of the Delegates to the Minister and their constituents is useful, 
by impressing more strongly on them the importance of their choice ; by 
bringing their individual conduct before the world, and thus enhancing their 
consciousness of responsibility. — The signature of the instruction, and the 
solemn oath by the Curators, will tend to keep them alive, and, what is even 
of greater consequence, to keep the public alive to the nature and high value 
of their duties. If the public know what they have a right to expect, then 
trustees will be sure to feel as a necessity what they ought to perform. — But 
every precaution to raise an academical patronage out of the sphere of pri- 
vate and party influence is the more anxiously to be taken, as in no other 
country of Europe, both from the relations of our Universities, and the con- 
stitution of our government, has merit hitherto obtained so little weight in 
the choice of professors, — in no other country is the national conscience in 
regard to the distribution of public patronage so blunted. To this end the 
other regulations likewise concur; — the checks and counter- checks of the 
Minister, Curators, and primary bodies on each other; and the necessity 
imposed on the Curators of vindicating their choice by an exposition of its 
grounds. The reason of the exclusion of the presidents of the primary 
bodies from the office of Delegate is to prevent the delegation from the risk 
of falling into routine, or being considered as other than a special and most 
important trust. The exclusion of peers, the president, and justice-clerk. 



HOW ACADEMICAL CURATORS TO BE HERE APPOINTED. 385 

&c, from the office of Curator, is to prevent that honour from being made, 
or appearing to be made, a sequel to any personal or official rank, — from 
being regarded as other than the highest and most unequivocal mark of pub- 
lic confidence in the high character and peculiar capacity of the individual 
elected to the situation. 

" Without attempting an ideal perfection by this plan, I am confident a 
board of academical Curators would easily and surely be obtained, who would 
perform all that could reasonably be expected, and determine a golden era in 
the fortunes of our Scottish Universities." 

On reading over the preceding, the scheme now strikes me as too complex, 
and it might, I think, be simplified, without essential detriment, by several 
omissions. In principle, I am however persuaded, it is right, and favour 
strongly the plan of indirect or mediate election ; for it is of great importance, 
that curators should be chosen by the joint intelligence of a small body, nor 
feel themselves the nominees, of any particular interest or class. However, 
as indirect election is not generally understood in this country, if the elective 
bodies are precluded from choosing among their own members, I have no 
doubt that a fair board of academical appointment and controul would be 
obtained ; nay, that one constituted in the simple mode recommended by the 
Burgh Commissioners would be a marvellous improvement on the present 
reign of ignorance, favour, passion and caprice. How greatly the University 
of Edinburgh is in want of a good superintendence, (to say nothing of a good 
patronage,) is shown by the actual state of its Examinations and Degrees. 
The Senatus Academicus, with many individual exceptions, is, as a body, 
totally incompetent to self- regulation ; and even the personal interest of a 
majority of its numerous members is now opposed to the general interests of 
learning, of the public, and of the University, as an organ of education. This 
is too manifestly shown in the misappropriation also of the funds left by 
General Reid, " to make additions to the Library, or otherwise to promote 
the general interest and advantage of the University, in such way as the 
Principal and Professors shall in their discretion think most fit and proper." 
This bequest, through the preponderance of a special interest, which has 
grown into command of the Senatus since the will was made, — in opposition 
to the manifest intention of the testator, — and in opposition to the most sig- 
nificant warnings both from within and from without the body, has been 
diverted, not only to special purposes, but even to the personal advantage of 
a complement of the trustees : — the small majority refusing a preliminary 
inquiry, and not listening to the information offered, in regard to the general 
wants of the University ; overlooking all disapproval by the highest authori- 
ties of the moral character of the proceedings ; nay, resiling from their own 
previously professed intention of interrogating a Court of Law in regard to 
the bare legality of any contested measures. In fact, they are now content to 
sit, if so allowed, even under the judicial stigma incidentally called forth on 
the way in which the trust has been administered. (Compromise, conces- 
sion, — any thing for non-discussion may be expected forthwith.) Now, had 
there been a respected board of Curators over the University, these proceed- 
ings would never even have been attempted ; nor would a protesting minority 
now be compelled to share in the opprobrium of the very acts which they so 
cordially reprobated and so openly disavowed.] 

2b 



IV.-ON THE STATE OF THE ENGLISH 
UNIVERSITIES, 

WITH MORE ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD.* 



(June, 1831.) 

1. — Addenda ad Corpus Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis. 
4to. Oxonii: 1825. 

2. — The Oxford University Calendar, for 1829. 8vo. Oxford: 
1829. 

This is the age of reform. — Next in importance to our religious 
and political establishments, are the foundations for public educa- 
tion ; and having now seriously engaged in a reform of " the 
constitution, the envy of surrounding nations/' the time cannot 

* [In Cross's Selections ; translated into German ; and abridged by M. 
Peisse, &c. 

When this article was written, the history of onr oldest universities 
(Oxford and Cambridge) had fallen into oblivion ; their parts and principles 
were not understood, even by themselves ; nay, opinions asserted and uni- 
versally accepted touching the most essential points of their constitution, 
not only erroneous, but precisely the converse of truth. The more obvious 
sources of information did not remedy, when they did not counteuance, the mis- 
apprehensions. Criticism, not compilation, was therefore requisite ; and a cor- 
rection of the more important errors, avoiding as much as possible all second- 
hand authorities, — this a collection of original documents, to say nothing 
of the more authentic histories of universities and academical antiquities, 
which I had succeeded in forming, has enabled me (I hope unostentatiously) 
to accomplish. The views in this and the subsequent articles, have been 
followed, (often silently,) without controversy, and almost without hesita- 
tion, both in this country and abroad ; while even the trifling inaccuracies, 
into which I had inadvertently fallen, are faithfully copied by those who 
would be supposed to loole and spouk (or themselves.] 



PLAN OF DISCUSSION. 387 

be distant for a reform in the schools and universities which 
have hardly avoided their contempt. Public intelligence is not, 
as hitherto, tolerant of prescriptive abuses, and the country now 
demands — that endowments for the common weal should no longer 
be administered for private advantage. At this auspicious crisis, 
and under a ministry, no longer warring against general opinion, 
we should be sorry not to contribute our endeavour to attract 
attention to the defects w-hich more or less pervade all our 
national seminaries of education, and to the means best calculated 
for their removal. We propose, therefore, from time to time, to 
continue to review the state of these establishments, considered 
both absolutely in themselves, and in relation to the other cir- 
cumstances which have contributed to modify the intellectual 
condition of the different divisions of the empire. 

In proceeding to the Universities, we commence with Oxford. 
This University is entitled to precedence, from its venerable anti- 
quity, its ancient fame, the wealth of its endowments, and the 
importance of its privileges : but there is another reason for our 
preference. 

Without attempting any idle and invidious comparison, — with- 
out asserting the superior or inferior excellence of Oxford in con- 
trast with any other British University, we have no hesitation 
in affirming, that comparing what it actually is with what it pos- 
sibly could be, Oxford is, of all academical institutions, at once 
the most imperfect and the most perfectible. Properly directed, 
as they might be, the means which it possesses would render 
it the most efficient University in existence ; improperly directed, 
as they are, each part of the apparatus only counteracts another ; 
and there is not a similar institution which, in proportion to what 
it ought to accomplish, accomplishes so little. But it is not in 
demonstrating the imperfection of the present system, that we 
principally ground a hope of its improvement ; it is in demon- 
strating its illegality. In the reform of an ancient establishment 
like Oxford, the great difficulty is to initiate a movement. In 
comparing Oxford as it is, with an ideal standard, there may be 
differences of opinion in regard to the kind of change expedient, 
if not in regard to the expediency of a change at all ; but, in 
comparing it with the standard of its own code of statutes, there 
can be none. It will not surely be contended that matters should 
continue as they are, if it can be shown that, as now administered, 
this University pretends only to accomplish a petty fraction of 



388 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

the ends proposed to it by law, and attempts even this only by 
illegal means. But a progress being determined towards a state 
of right, it is easy to accelerate the momentum towards a state of 
excellence : — oIqw vptav tf&vtog. 

Did the limits of a single paper allow us to exhaust the sub- 
ject, we should, in the fii^st place, consider the state of the Uni- 
versity, both as established in law, but non-existent in fact, and 
as established in fact, but non-existent in law ; in the second, the 
causes which determined the transition from the statutory to the 
illegal constitution ; in the third, the advantages and disadvan- 
tages of the two systems ; and, in the fourth, the means by which 
the University may be best restored to its efficiency. In the pre- 
sent article, we can, however, only compass, — and that inade- 
quately, — the first and second heads. The third and fourth we 
must reserve for a separate discussion, in which we shall endea- 
vour to demonstrate, that the intrusive system, compared with 
the legitimate, is as absurd as it is unauthorized, — that the preli- 
minary step in a reform must be a return to the Statutory Con- 
stitution, — and that this constitution, though far from faultless, 
may, by a few natural and easy changes, be improved into an 
instrument of academical education, the most perfect perhaps in 
the world. The subject of our consideration at present requires 
a fuller exposition, not only from its intrinsic importance, but 
because, strange as it may appear, the origin, and consequently 
the cure, of the corruption of the English Universities, is totally 
misunderstood. The vices of the present system have been 
observed, and frequently discussed ; but as it has never been 
shown in what manner these vices were generated, so it has never 
been perceived how easily their removal might be enforced. It is 
generally believed that, however imperfect in itself, the actual 
mechanism of education organized in these seminaries, is a time- 
honoured and essential part of their being, established upon sta- 
tute, endowed by the national legislature with exclusive privi- 
leges, and inviolable as a vested right. We shall prove, on the 
contrary, that it is new as it is inexpedient, — not only accidental 
to the University, but radically subversive of its constitution, — 
without legal sanction, nay, in violation of positive law, — arro- 
gating the privileges exclusively conceded to another system. 
which it has superseded, — and so tar from being defensible by 
those it profits, as a right, that it is a flagrant usurpation, obtained 
through perjury, and only tolerated from neglect. 



UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGES— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 389 

I. Oxford and Cambridge, as establishments for education, 
consist of two parts, — of the University proper, and of the Col- 
leges. The former, original and essential, is founded, controlled, 
and privileged by public authority, for the advantage of the 
nation. The latter, accessory and contingent, are created, regu- 
lated, and endowed by private munificence, for the interest of cer- 
tain favoured individuals, Time was* when the Colleges did not 
exist, and the University was there ; and were the Colleges again 
abolished, the University would remain entire. The former, 
founded solely for education, exists only as it accomplishes the 
end of its institution ; the latter, founded principally for aliment 
and habitation, would still exist, were all education abandoned 
within their walls. The University, as a national establishment, 
is necessarily open to the lieges in general ; the Colleges, as pri- 
vate institutions, might universally do, as some have actually 
done, — close their gates upon all, except their foundation mem- 
bers. 

The University and Colleges are thus neither identical, nor 
vicarious of each other. If the University ceases to perform its 
functions, it ceases to exist ; and the privileges accorded by the 
nation to the system of public education legally organized in the 
University, cannot, without the consent of the nation, — far less 
without the consent of the academical legislature, — be lawfully 
transferred to the system of private education precariously organ- 
ized in the Colleges, and over which neither the State nor the 
University have any control. They have, however, been unlaw- 
fully usurped. 

Through the suspension of the University, and the usurpation 
of its functions and privileges by the Collegial bodies, there has 
arisen the second of two systems, diametrically opposite to each 
other. — The one, in which the University was paramount, is 
ancient and statutory ; the other, in which the Colleges have the 
ascendant, is recent and illegal. — In the former, all was subser- 
vient to public utility, and the interests of science ; in the latter, 
all is sacrificed to private monopoly, and to the convenience of 
the teacher. — The former amplified the means of education in 
accommodation to the mighty end which a University proposes ; 
the latter limits the end which the University attempts to the 
capacity of the petty instruments which the intrusive system 
employs. — The one afforded education in all the Faculties ; the 



390 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

other professes to furnish only elementary tuition in the lowest. 
— In the authorized system, the cycle of instruction was distri- 
buted among a body of teachers, all professedly chosen from merit, 
and each concentrating his ability on a single object ; in the 
unauthorised, every branch, necessary to be learned, is monopo- 
lized by an individual, privileged to teach all, though probably ill 
qualified to teach any. — The old system daily collected into large 
classes, under the same professor, the whole youth of the Univer- 
sity of equal standing, and thus rendered possible a keen and con- 
stant and unremitted competition ; the new, which elevates the 
colleges and halls into so many little universities, and in these 
houses distributes the students, without regard to ability or stand- 
ing, among some fifty tutors, frustrates all emulation among the 
members of its small and ill-assorted classes. — In the superseded 
system, the Degrees in all the Faculties were solemn testimonials 
that the graduate had accomplished a regular course of study in 
the public schools of the University, and approved his competence 
by exercise and examination ; and on these degrees, only as such 
testimonials, and solely for the public good, were there bestowed 
by the civil legislature, great and exclusive privileges in the 
church, in the courts of law, and in the practice of medicine. In 
the superseding system, Degrees "in all the Faculties, except the 
lowest department of the lowest, certify neither a course of 
academical study, nor any ascertained proficiency in the graduate ; 
and these now nominal distinctions retain their privileges to the 
public detriment, and for the benefit only of those by whom they 
have been deprived of their significance. — Such is the general 
contrast of the two systems, which we must now exhibit in 
detail. 

System de jure. — The Corpus Statutorum by which the Uni- 
versity of Oxford is — we should say, ought to be — governed, was 
digested by a committee appointed for that purpose, through the 
influence of Laud, and solemnly ratified by King, Chancellor, and 
Convocation, in the year 1636. The far greater number of those 
statutes had been previously in force ; and, except in certain 
articles subsequently added, modified, or restricted, (contained in 
the Appendix and Addenda,) they exclusively determine the law 
and constitution of the University to the present hour. Every 
member is bound by oath and subscription to their faithful obser- 
vance. — In explanation of the statutory system of instruction, it 



LEGAL SYSTEM— HISTORY OF. 391 

may be proper to say a few words in regard to the history of 
academical teaching, previous to the publication of the Laudian 
Code. 

In the original constitution of Oxford, as in that of all the older 
universities of the Parisian model, the business of instruction was 
not confided to a special body of privileged professors. The Uni- 
versity was governed, the University was taught, by the graduates 
at large. Professor, Master, Doctor, were originally synonymous. 
Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the 
University the subjects competent to his faculty, and to the rank 
of his degree ; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of 
teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty, 
for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree 
itself. The Bachelor, or imperfect graduate, partly as an exercise 
towards the higher honour, and useful to himself, partly as a per- 
formance due for the degree obtained, and of advantage to others, 
was bound to read under a master or doctor in his faculty, a course 
of lectures ; and the Master, Doctor, or perfect graduate, was, in 
like manner, after his promotion, obliged immediately to com- 
mence, (incipere,) and to continue for a certain period publicly to 
teach, (regere,) some at least of the subjects appertaining to his 
faculty. As, however, it was only necessary for the University 
to enforce this obligation of public teaching, compulsory on all 
graduates during the term of their necessary regency, if there did 
not come forward a competent number of voluntary regents to 
execute this function ; and as the schools belonging to the several 
faculties, and in which alone all public or ordinary instruction 
could be delivered, were frequently inadequate to accommodate 
the multitude of the inceptors ; it came to pass, that in these Uni- 
versities the original period of necessary regency was once and 
again abbreviated, and even a dispensation from actual teaching 
during its continuance, commonly allowed.* At the same time, as 

* In Oxford, where the public schools of the Faculty of Arts, in School 
Street, were proportionally more numerous (there are known by name above 
forty sets of schools anciently open in that street, i. e. buildings, containing 
from four to sixteen class-rooms) than those in Paris belonging to the dif- 
ferent nations of that faculty, in the Rue de la Fouarre (Vicus Stramineus), 
— in Oxford this dispensation was more tardily allowed. In Paris, the Mas- 
ter who was desirous of exercising this privilege of his degree, petitioned his 
faculty pro regentia et scholis ,• and schools, as they fell vacant, were granted 
to him by his nation, according to his seniority. 



392 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

the University only accomplished the end of its existence through 
its regents, they alone were allowed to enjoy full privileges in its 
legislation and government ; they alone partook of its beneficia 
and sporfcula3. In Paris, the non-regent graduates were only 
assembled on rare and extraordinary occasions ; in Oxford, the 
regents constituted the House of Congregation, which, among 
other exclusive prerogatives, was anciently the initiatory assembly, 
through which it behoved that every measure should pass, before 
it could be submitted to the House of Convocation, composed 
indifferently of all regents and non-regents resident in the Uni- 
versity.* 

This distinction of regent and non-regent continued most rigidly 
marked in the Faculty of Arts, — the faculty on which the older 
universities were originally founded, and which was always greatly 
the most numerous. In the other faculties, both in Paris and 
Oxford, all doctors succeeded in usurping the style and privileges 
of regent, though not actually engaged in teaching ; and in Ox- 
ford, the same was allowed to masters of the Faculty of Arts 
during the statutory period of their necessary regency, even 
when availing themselves of a dispensation from the performance 
of its duties ; and extended to the Heads of Houses, (who were 
also in Paris Regeiw d'ho7ineur 9 ) and to College Deans. This 
explains the constitution of the Oxford House of Congregation at 
the present day. 

The ancient system of academical instruction by the graduates 
at large, was, however, still more essentially modified by another 
innovation. The regents were entitled to exact from their audi- 
tors a certain regulated fee (pastus, collecta.) To relieve the 
scholars of this burden, and to secure the services of able teachers, 
salaries were sometimes given to certain graduates, on considera- 
tion of their delivery of ordinary lectures without collect. In 
many universities, attendance on these courses was specially reqir- 
red of those proceeding to a degree ; and it was to the salaried 
graduates that the title of Professors, in academical language, 
was at last peculiarly attributed. By this institution of salaried 
lecturers, dispensation could be universally accorded to the other 
graduates. The unsalaried regents found, in general, their schools 



* It was only by an abusive fiction that those were subsequently held to 
be Convictores, or actual residents in the University, who retained their 
names on the boohs of a Hall, or College. See Corpus Statutorum, tit. x.§ 1 



LEGAL SYSTEM— HISTORY OF. 393 

deserted for the gratuitous instruction of the privileged lecturers ; 
and though the right of public teaching competent to every gra- 
duate still remained entire, its exercise was, in a great measure, 
abandoned to the body of professors organized more or less com- 
pletely in the several faculties throughout the universities of 
Europe. To speak only of Oxford, and in Oxford only of the 
Faculty of Arts : ten salaried Readers or Professors of the seven 
arts and the three philosophies* had been nominated by the 
House of Congregation, and attendance on their lectures enforced 
by statute, long prior to the epoch of the Laudian digest. At the 
date of that code, the greater number of these chairs had obtain- 
ed permanent endowments ; and four only depended for a fluctua- 
ting stipend on certain fines and taxes levied on the graduates 
they relieved from teaching, and on the under-graduates they 
were appointed to teach. At that period it was, however, still 
usual for simple graduates to exercise their right of lecturing in 
the public schools. While this continued, ability possessed an 
opportunity of honourable manifestation ; a nursery of experienced 
teachers was afforded ; the salaried readers were not allowed to 
slumber in the quiescence of an uninfringible monopoly ; their 
election could less easily degenerate into a matter of interest and 
favour ; while the student, presented with a more extensive sphere 
of information, was less exposed to form exclusive opinions, when 
hearing the same subjects treated by different lecturers in different 
manners. These advantages have, by such an arrangement, been 
secured in the German universities. 

In Oxford, the Corpus Statutorum introduced little or no change 

* The Faculty of Arts originally comprehended, besides the three philo- 
sophies, the whole seven arts. Of these latter, some were, however, at 
different times, thrown out of the faculty, or separated from the other arts, 
and special degrees given in them, either apart from, or in subordination to, 
tHe general degree. Thus, in Oxford (as in other of the older Universities), 
special degrees were given in Grammar, in Rhetoric, and in Music. The 
two former subjects were again withdrawn into the faculty, and their degrees 
waxed obsolete, — but Music and its degree still remain apart. — The General 
Sophist was a special degree in Logic, but subordinate to the general degree 
in Arts. — It is needless to say, that these particular degrees gave no entry 
into the academical assemblies. The historians of the universities of Paris 
and Oxford have misconceived this subject, from not illustrating the practice 
of the one school by that of the other. Duboullay and Wood knew nothing 
of each other's works, though writing at the same time, and Crevier never 
looked beyond Duboullay. 



394 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

in the mechanism of academical instruction ; nor has this been 
done by any subsequent enactment. On the contrary, the most 
recent statutes on the subject — those of 1801 and 1808 — recog- 
nise the ancient system ratified under Laud, as that still in force, 
and actually in operation. (Corp. Stat. T. iv. Add. p. 129 — 1 33. 
p. 190 — 192.) The scheme thus established in law, though now 
abolished in fact, is as follows : — 

Education is afforded in all the faculties in which degrees are 
granted, by the University itself, through its accredited organs, 
the public readers or professors, — a regular attendance on whose 
lectures during a stated period is in every faculty indispensably 
requisite to qualify for a degree. To say nothing of Music, the 
University grants degrees, and furnishes instruction in four facul- 
ties, — Arts, Theology, Civil Law, and Medicine.* 

In Akts there are established eleven Public Readers or Profes- 
sors ; a regular attendance on whose courses is necessary during 
a period of four years to qualify for Bachelor, — during seven, to 
qualify for Master. The student must frequent, during the first 
year, the lectures on Grammar and Rhetoric ; during the second, 
Logic and Moral Philosophy ; during the third and fourth, Logic 
and Moral Philosophy, Geometry and Greek; during the fifth, 
(bachelors of first year,) Geometry, Metaphysics, History, Greek, 
— and Hebrew, if destined for the church ; during the sixth and 
seventh, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, History, 
Greek, — and Hebrew, if intending divines. 

To commence student in the faculty of Theology, a Master- 
ship in Arts is a requisite preliminary. There are two Professors 
of Divinity, on whom attendance is required, during seven years 
for the degree of Bachelor, and subsequently during four for that 
of Doctor. 

In the faculty of Civil Law there is one Professor. The stu- 
dent is not required to have graduated in Arts ; but if a Master 
in that faculty, three years of attendance on the professor qualify 

* Since the Reformation, as the subject of the faculty of Canon Law was 
no longer taught, degrees in that faculty were very properly by Royal order 
discontinued, (that faculty and its degrees being formally abolished by Henry 
VIII. in the Universities ;) though the Canon Law has continued still to reign. 
and the papal abuses to prevail in the ecclesiastical courts of justice to the 
present hour. But why, it may be asked, arc degrees still suffered to con- 
tinue in the other faculties, when the relative instruction is no longer 
afforded? 



SYSTEM DE JURE. 395 

him for a Bachelor's degree, and four thereafter for a Doctor's. 
The simple student must attend his professor during five years for 
Bachelor, and ten for Doctor ; and previous to commencing stu- 
dent in this faculty, he must have frequented the courses of logic, 
moral and political philosophy, and of the other humane sciences 
during two years, and history until his presentation for Bachelor. 
By recent statute, to commence the study of law, it is necessary 
to pass the examination for Bachelor of Arts. 

To commence student in Medicine, it is necessary to have 
obtained a Mastership in Arts, and thereafter the candidate, 
(besides a certain attendance on the Prselector of Anatomy,) must 
have heard the Professor of Medicine during three years for the 
degree of Bachelor, and again during four years for that of 
Doctor.* 

The Professors are bound to lecture during term, with excep- 
tion of Lent, *. e. for about six months annually, twice a-week, and 
for two full hours ;f and penalties are incurred by teacher and 
student for any negligence in the performance of their several 
duties. Among other useful regulations, it was here, as in other 
ancient universities, enjoined, " that after lecture, the Professors 
should tarry for some time in the schools ; and if any scholar or 
auditor may wish to argue against what has been delivered from 
the chair, or may otherwise have any dubiety to resolve, that 
they should listen to him kindly, and satisfy his difficulties and 
doubts." 

But though a body of Professors was thus established as the 
special organ through which the University effected the purposes 
of its institution, the right was not withdrawn, nay, is expressly 
declared to remain inviolate, which every Master and Doctor 
possessed in virtue of his degree, of opening in the public schools 
a course of lectures on any of the subjects within the compass of 
his faculty. (Corp. St. T. iv. § 1.) 

But besides the public and principal means of instruction afforded 
by the Professors and other Regents in the University, the stu- 
dent was subjected until his first degree, or during the first four 

* Of several other chairs subsequently established, we make no mention, 
as these were never constituted into necessary parts of the academical 
system. 

f Previously to Laud's statutes, the professors in general were bound to 
lecture daily, and all, if we recollect, at least four times a-week. The change 
was absurd. It was standing which should have been shortened. 



396 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD. 

years of his academical life, to the subsidiary and private disci- 
pline of a Tutor in the Hall or College to which he belonged. 
This regulation was rendered peculiarly expedient by circum- 
stances which no longer exist. Prior to the period of the Laudian 
digest, it was customary to enter the University at a very early 
age ; and the student of those times, when he obtained the rank 
of Master, was frequently not older than the student of the pre- 
sent when he matriculates. It was of course found useful to place 
these academical boys under the special guardianship of a tutor 
during the earlier years of their residence in the University ; as 
it was also expedient to counteract the influence of Popish tutors. 
With this, however, as a merely private concern, the University 
did not interfere ; and we doubt, whether before the chancellor- 
ship of the puritanical Leicester, any attempt was made to regu- 
late, by academical authority, the character of those who might 
officiate in this capacity, or before the chancellorship of Laud, 
to render imperative the entering under a tutor at all, and a 
tutor resident in the same house with the pupil. (Compare 
Wood's Annals, a. 1581, and Corp. Stat. T. iii. § 2.) Be this, 
however, as it may, the tutorial office was viewed as one of very 
subordinate importance in the statutory system. To commence 
tutor, it was only necessary for a student to have the lowest 
degree in arts, and that his learning, his moral and religious cha- 
racter, should be approved of by the head of the house in which he 
resided, or, in the event of controversy on this point, by the vice- 
chancellor. All that was expected of him was, " to imbue his 
pupils with good principles, and institute them in approved 
authors; but above all, in the rudiments of religion, and the doc- 
trine of the Thirty-nine Articles ; and that he should do all that 
in him lay to render them conformable to the Church of England.'' 
" It is also his duty to contain his pupils within statutory regula- 
tions in matters of external appearance, such as their clothes, 
boots, and hair ; which, if the pupils are found to transgress, the 
tutor for the first, second, and third offence, shall forfeit six and 
eightpence, and for the fourth, shall be interdicted from his tuto- 
rial function by the vice-chancellor." (T. iii. § 2.) — Who could 
have anticipated from this statute what the tutor was ultimately 
to become ? 

The preceding outline is sufficient to show that by statute the 
University of Oxford proposes an end not less comprehensive 
than other universities, and attempts to accomplish that end by 



SYSTEM DE JURE-SYSTEM DE FACTO. 397 

the same machinery which they employ. It proposes as its ade- 
quate end, the education of youth in the four faculties of arts, 
theology, law, and medicine ; and for accomplishment of this, a 
body of public lecturers constitute the instrument which it prin- 
cipally, if not exclusively, employs. But as the University of 
Oxford only executes its purpose, and therefore only realises its 
existence, through the agency of its professorial system ; conse- 
quently, whatever limits, weakens, or destroys the efficiency of 
that system, limits, weakens, and destroys the university itself. 
With the qualities of this system, as organised in Oxford, we have 
at present no concern. We may, however, observe, that if not 
perfect, it was perfectible ; and at the date of its establishment, 
there were few universities in Europe which could boast of an 
organization of its public instructors more complete, and none 
perhaps in which that organization was so easily susceptible of so 
high an improvement. 

In the system de facto ail is changed. The University is in 
abeyance ; — " Stat magni nominis umbra" In none of the facul- 
ties is it supposed that the professors any longer furnish the 
instruction necessary for a degree. Some chairs are even nomi- 
nally extinct where an endowment has not perpetuated the sine- 
cure ; and the others betray, in general, their existence only 
through the Calendar. If the silence of " the schools " be occasionally 
broken by a formal lecture, or if on some popular subjects (fees 
being now permitted) a short course be usually delivered ; atten- 
dance on these is not more required or expected, than attendance 
in the music-room. For every degree in every faculty above 
Bachelor of Arts, standing on the College books, is allowed to 
count for residence in the university, and attendance on the 
public courses; and though, under these circumstances, exami- 
nations be more imperatively necessary, an examination only 
exists for the elementary degree, of which residence is also a 
condition. 

It is thus not even pretended that Oxford now supplies more 
than the preliminary of an academical education. Even this is 
not afforded by the University, but abandoned to the Colleges 
and Halls ; and the Academy of Oxford is therefore not one pub- 
lic University, but merely a collection of private schools. The 
University, in fact, exists only in semblance, for the behoof of the 
unauthorized seminaries by which it has been replaced, and which 



398 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

have contrived, under covert of its name, to slip into possession of 
its public privileges.* 

But as academical education was usurped by the Tutors from 
the Professors, — so all tutorial education was usurped by the Fel- 
lows from the other graduates. The fellows exclusively teach all 
that Oxford now deems necessary to be taught; and as every 
tutor is singly vicarious of the whole ancient body of professors, 
— dvvjQ noKhliv dvrx^tos &Kkow, — the present capacity of the Univer- 
sity to effect the purposes of its establishment must, consequently, 
be determined by the capacity of each felloiu-tutor to compass the 
cyclopcedia of academical instruction. If Oxford accomplishes the 
ends of a University even in its lowest faculty, every fellow-tutor 
must be a second " Doctor Universalis," 

" Qui tria, qui septem, qui totum scibile scivit." 
But while thus resting her success on the most extraordinary 
ability of her teachers, we shall see that she makes no provision 
even for their most ordinary competence. 

* How completely the University is annihilated, — how completely even all 
memory of its history, all knowledge of its constitution, have perished in Oxford, 
is significantly shown in the following passage, written not many years ago, 
by a very able defender of things as they now are in that seminary. " There 
are, moreover," says Bishop Copplestone, " some points in the constitution 
of this place, which are carefully kept out of sight by our revilers, but which 
ought to be known and well considered, before any comparison is made 
between what we are, and what we ought to be. The University of 
Oxford is not a National Foundation. It is a congeries of foundations, 
originating some in royal munificence, but more in private piety and bounty. 
They are moulded indeed into one corporation ; but each one of our twenty 
Colleges is a corporation by itself, and has its own peculiar statutes, not 
only regulating its internal affairs, but confining its benefits by a great 
variety of limitations." (Reply to the Calumnies of the Ediidntrgh Review, 
p. 183.) In refutation of this uncontradicted assertion, which is not simply 
wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, we shall content ourselves 
with merely quoting a sentence from the " Abstract of divers Privileges and 
Rights of the University of Oxford,' 1 ' 1 by the celebrated Dr Wallis, the least of 
whose merits was an intimate acquaintance with the history and constitution 
of the establishment of which he was Registrar. "The rights or privileges 
(whatever they be) [are] not granted or belonging to Scholars as living in 
Colleges, fyc. but to Colleges, &c, as houses inhabited by Scholars, the Col- 
leges which we now have being accidental to the corporation of the University, 
and the confining of Scholars now to a certain number of Colleges and Hails 
being extrinsical to the University, and by a law of their own making, each 
College (but not the Halls) being a distinct corporation from that of the Uni- 
versity." 



SYSTEM DE FACTO— FELLOW-TUTORS. 399 

As the fellowships were not founded for the purposes of teach- 
ing, so the qualifications that constitute a fellow are not those that 
constitute an instructor. The Colleges owe their establishment 
to the capricious bounty of individuals ; and the fellow rarely 
owes his eligibility to merit alone, but in the immense majority of 
cases to fortuitous circumstances.* The fellowships in Oxford 
are, with few exceptions, limited to founder's kin, — to founder's 
kin, born in particular counties, or educated at particular schools, 
— to the scholars of certain schools, without restriction, or nar- 
rowed by some additional circumstance of age or locality of birth, 
— to the natives of certain dioceses, archdeaconries, islands, coun- 
ties, towns, parishes or manors, under every variety of arbitrary 
condition. In some cases, the candidate must be a graduate of a 
certain standing, in others he must not ; in some he must be in 
orders, perhaps priest's, in others he is only bound to enter the 
church within a definite time. In some cases the fellow may 
freely choose his profession ; in general he is limited to theology, 
and in a few instances must proceed in law or medicine. The 
nomination is sometimes committed to an individual, sometimes to 
a body of men, and these either within or without the College 
and University ; but in general it belongs to the fellows. The 
elective power is rarely, however, deposited in worthy hands ; 
and even when circumstances permit any liberty of choice, desert 
has too seldom a chance in competition with favour. With one 
unimportant exception, the fellowships are perpetual ; but they 

* This is candidly acknowledged by the intelligent apologist just quoted. 
" In most Colleges the fellowships are appropriated to certain schools, dio- 
ceses, counties, and in some cases even to parishes, with a preference given 
to the founder's kindred for ever. Many qualifications, quite foreign to 
intellectual talents and learning, are thus enjoined by the founders ; and in 
very few instances is a free choice of candidates allowed to the fellows of a 
College, upon any vacancy in their number. Merit therefore has not such 
provision made as the extent of the endowments might seem to promise. 
Now it is certain that each of these various institutions is not the best. The 
best of them perhaps are those [in only two Colleges] where an unrestrained 
choice is left among all candidates who have taken one degree. The worst 
are those which are appropriated to schools, from which boys of sixteen or 
seventeen are forwarded to a fixed station and emolument, which nothing 
can forfeit but flagrant misconduct, and which no exertion can render more 
valuable." {Reply to the Calumnies, &c. p. 183.) We may add, that even 
where " a free choice of candidates is allowed," the electors are not always 
animated by the spirit which has latterly prevailed in the Colleges, — of Balliol 
and Oriel, Oxford, of Trinity, Cambridge. 



400 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

are vacated by marriage, and by acceptance of a living in the 
Church above a limited amount. They vary greatly in emolu- 
ment in different Colleges ; and in the same Colleges the differ- 
ence is often considerable between those on different foundations, 
and on the same foundations between the senior and the junior 
fellowships. Some do not even afford the necessaries of life; 
others are more than competent to its superfluities. Residence is 
now universally dispensed with; though in some cases certain 
advantages are only to be enjoyed on the spot. In the Church, 
the Colleges possess considerable patronage ; the livings as they 
fall vacant are at the option of the fellows in the order of seniority ; 
and the advantage of a fellowship depends often less on the 
amount of salary which it immediately affords, than on the value 
of the preferment to which it may ultimately lead. 

But while, as a body, the fellows can thus hardly be sup- 
posed to rise above the vulgar average of intelligence and 
acquirement : so, of the fellows, it is not those best competent to 
its discharge who are generally found engaged in the business of 
tuition. 

In the first place, there is no power of adequate selection, 
were there even sufficient materials from which to choose. The 
head, himself, of the same leaven with the fellows, cannot be 
presumed greatly to transcend their level ; and he is peculiarly 
exposed to the influence of that party spirit by which collegial 
bodies are so frequently distracted. Were his approbation of 
tutors, therefore, free, we could have no security for the wisdom 
and impartiality of his choice. But in point of fact he can 
only legally refuse his sanction on the odious grounds of ignor- 
ance, vice, or irreligion. The tutors are thus virtually self- 
appointed. 

But in the second place, a fellow constitutes himself a tutor, 
not because he suits the office, but because the office is conve- 
nient to him. The standard of tutorial capacity and of tutorial 
performance is in Oxford too low to frighten even the diffident 
or lazy. The advantages of the situation in point either of 
profit or reputation, are not sufficient to tempt ambitious talent ; 
and distinguished ability is sure soon to be withdrawn from the 
vocation, — if marriage does not precipitate a retreat.* The 

* " So far from a College being a drain upon the world, the world drains 
Colleges of their most efficient members ; and although the University thus 



SYSTEM DE FACTO— FELLOW-TUTORS. 401 

fellow who in general undertakes the office., and continues the 
longest to discharge it, is a clerical expectant whose hopes are 
bounded by a College living ; and who, until the wheel of pro- 
motion has moved round, is content to relieve the tedium of a 
leisure life by the interest of an occupation, and to improve his 
income by its emoluments. Thus it is that tuition is not solemnly 
engaged in as an important, arduous, responsible, and perma- 
nent occupation ; but lightly viewed and undertaken as a matter 
of convenience, a business by the by, a state of transition, a 
stepping-stone to something else ;■ — in a word, as a pass-time. 

But in the third place, were the tutors not the creatures of 
accident, did merit exclusively determine their appointment, 
and did the situation tempt the services of the highest talent, 
still it would be impossible to find a complement of able men 
equal in number to the cloud of tutors whom Oxford actually 
employs. 

This general demonstration of what the fellow-tutors of Oxford 
must be, is more than confirmed by a view of what they actually 
are. — It is not contended that the system excludes men of merit, 
but that merit is in general the accident, not the principle, of 
their appointment. We might, therefore, always expect, on the 
common doctrine of probabilities, that among the multitude of 
college tutors, there should be a few known to the world for 
ability and erudition. But we assert, without fear of contradic- 
tion, that, on the average, there is to be found among those to 
whom Oxford confides the business of education, an infinitely 
smaller proportion of men of literary reputation, than among the 
actual instructors of any other University in the world. For 
example : the second work at the head of this article exhibits the 
names of above forty fellow-tutors; yet among these we have 
not encountered a single individual of whose literary existence 
the public is aware. This may be an unfavourable accident ; but 
where is the University, out of Britain, of which so little could at 
any time be said of its instructors ? 

We at present consider the system de facto in itself, and with- 
out reference to its effects ; and say nothing of its qualities, except 

becomes a more effectual engine of education [! how ?] it loses much of that 
characteristic feature it once had, as a residence of learned leisure, and an 
emporium of literature." — Reply to the Calumnies, Spc. p. 185. — [Adam Smith, 
who was himself of Oxford, has some good observations upon this rapid 
drainage and its effect in sinking the University.] 

2 c 



402 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

in so far as these are involved in the bare statement of its organi- 
zation. So much, however, is notorious ; either the great Univer- 
sity of Oxford does not noiv attempt to accomplish what it was 
established to effect, and what every, even the meanest, University 
proposes ; or it attempts this by means inversely proportioned to 
the end, and thus ludicrously fails in the endeavour. That there 
is much of good, much worthy of imitation by other Universi- 
ties, in the present spirit and present economy of Oxford, we are 
happy to acknowledge, and may at another time endeavour to 
demonstrate. But this good is occasioned, not effected; it exists, 
not in consequence of any excellence in the instructors, — and is 
only favoured in so far as it is compatible with the interest of 
those private corporations, who administer the University exclu- 
sively for their own benefit. As at present organized, it is a 
doubtful problem whether the tutorial system ought not to be 
abated as a nuisance. For if some tutors may afford assistance to 
some pupils, to other pupils other tutors prove equally an impedi- 
ment. We are no enemies of collegial residence, no enemies of a 
tutorial discipline, even now when its former necessity has in a 
great measure been superseded. To vindicate its utility under 
present circumstances, it must, however, be raised not merely from 
its actual corruption, but even to a higher excellence than it pos- 
sessed by its original constitution. A tutorial system in subor- 
dination to a professorial (which Oxford formerly enjoyed) we 
regard as affording the condition of an absolutely perfect Uni- 
versity. But the tutorial system as now dominant in Oxford, 
is vicious : 1°, in its application, — as usurping the place of the 
professorial, whose function, under any circumstances, it is inade- 
quate to discharge ; 2°, in its constitution, — the tutors as now 
fortuitously appointed, being, as a body, incompetent even to the 
duties of subsidiary instruction. 

II. We come now to our second subject of consideration : — To 
inquire by what causes and for what ends this revolution was 
accomplished'; how the English Universities, and in particular 
Oxford, passed from a legal to an illegal state, and from public 
Universities were degraded into private schools ? — The answer is 
precise : This was effected solely by the influence, and exclusively 
for the advantage, of the Colleges. But it requires some illustra- 
tion to understand, how the interest of these private corporations 
was opposed to that of the public institution, of which they were 
the accidents ; and how their domestic tuition was able gradually 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 403 

to undermine, and ultimately to supersede, the system of acade- 
mical lectures in aid of which it was established. 

Though Colleges be unessential accessories to a University, 
yet common circumstances occasioned, throughout all the older 
Universities, the foundation of conventual establishments for the 
habitation, support, and subsidiary discipline of the student ; and 
the date of the earliest Colleges is not long posterior to the date 
of the most ancient Universities. Establishments of this nature 
are thus not peculiar to England ; and like the greater number of 
her institutions, they were borrowed by Oxford from the mother 
University of Paris — but with peculiar and important modifica- 
tions. A sketch of the Collegial system as variously organized, 
and as variously affecting the academical constitution in foreign 
Universities, will afford a clearer conception of the distinctive 
character of that system in those of England, and of the para- 
mount and unexampled influence it has exerted in determining 
their corruption. 

The causes which originally promoted the establishment of 
Colleges, were very different from those which subsequently occa- 
sioned their increase, and are to be found in the circumstances 
under which the earliest Universities sprang up. The great con- 
course of the studious, counted by tens of thousands, and from 
every country of Europe, to the illustrious teachers of Law, 
Medicine, and Philosophy, who in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies delivered their prelections in Bologna, Salerno, and Paris, 
necessarily occasioned, in these cities, a scarcity of lodgings, and 
an exorbitant demand for rent. Various means were adopted to 
alleviate this inconvenience, but with inadequate effect ; and the 
hardships to which the poorer students were frequently exposed, 
moved compassionate individuals to provide houses, in which a 
certain number of indigent scholars might be accommodated with 
free lodging during the progress of their studies. The manners, 
also, of the cities in which the early Universities arose, were, for 
obvious reasons, more than usually corrupt ; and even attendance 
on the public teachers forced the student into dangerous and 
degrading associations.* Piety thus concurred with benevolence, 

* " Tunc autem," says the Cardinal de Vitry, who wrote in the first half 
of the thirteenth century, in speaking of the state of Paris, — " tunc autem 
amplius in Clero quam in alio populo dissoluta (Lutetia sc), tamquam capra 
scabiosa et ovis morbida, pernicioso exemplo multos hospites suos undique ad 
earn affluentes corrumpebat, habitatores suos devorans et in profundum 



404 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

in supplying houses in which poor scholars might be harboured 
without cost, and youth, removed from perilous temptation, be 
placed under the control of an overseer ; and an example was 
afforded for imitation in the Hospitia which the religious orders 
established in the University towns for those of their members 
who were now attracted, as teachers and learners, to these places 
of literary resort.* Free board was soon added to free lodging ; 
and a small bursary or stipend generally completed the endow- 
ment. With moral superintendence was conjoined literary dis- 
cipline, but still in subservience to the public exercises and lec- 
tures : opportunity was thus obtained of constant disputation, to 
which the greatest importance was wisely attributed, through all the 
scholastic ages ; while books, which only affluent individuals could 
then afford to purchase, were supplied for the general use of the 
indigent community. 

But as Paris was the University in which collegial establish- 
ments were first founded, so Paris was the University in which 
they soonest obtained the last and most important extension 
of their purposes. Regents were occasionally taken from the 
public schools, and placed as regular lecturers within the Col- 
leges. Sometimes nominated, always controlled, and only 
degraded by their Faculty, these lecturers were recognised as 
among its regular teachers ; and the same privileges accorded 
to the attendance on their College courses, as to those delivered 
by other graduates in the common schools of the University. 
Different Colleges thus afforded the means of academical educa- 
tion in certain departments of a faculty, — in a whole faculty, — 
or in several faculties ; and so far they constituted particular 

demergens, simplicem fornicationem nullum peccatum reputabat. Meretri- 
ces publicse, ubique per vicos et plateas civitatis, passim ad lupanaria sua 
clericos transeuntes quasi per violentiam pertrahebant. Quod si forte 
ingredi recusarent, coufestim eos ' Sodomitas,' post ipsos conclamentes, dice- 
bant. In una autem et eadem domo, scliolce erant superius, prostibula infer ius. 
In parte superiori magistri legebant, in infer iori meretrices officia turpitudinis 
exercebant. Ex una parte, meretrices inter se et cum Cenonibus [lenontbtts] 
litigabant; ex alia parte, disputantes et contentiose agentes clcrici proclama- 
ba?it.^ — (Jacobi de Vitriaco Hist. Occident, cap. vii.) — It thus appears, 
that the Schools of the Faculty of Arts were not as yet established in the 
Rue de la Fouarre. At this date in Paris, as originally also in Oxford, 
the lectures and disputations were conducted by the masters in their private 
habitations. 

* [In Italy the Colleges seem never to have gone beyond this. See Fac- 
ciolati Syntagma x.] 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 405 

incorporations of teachers and learners, apart from, and, in 
some degree, independent of, the general body of the University. 
They formed, in fact, so many petty Universities, or so many 
fragments of a University. Into the Colleges, thus furnished 
with professors, there were soon admitted to board and educa- 
tion pensioners, or scholars, not on the foundation ; and nothing- 
more was wanting to supersede the lecturer in the public schools, 
than to throw open these domestic classes to the members of the 
other Colleges, and to the martinets or scholars of the University 
not belonging to Colleges at all. In the course of the fifteenth 
century this was done; and the University and Colleges were 
thus intimately united. The College Regents, selected for talent, 
and recommended to favour by their nomination, soon diverted 
the students from the unguaranteed courses of the lecturers in 
the University schools. The prime faculties of Theology and Arts 
became at last exclusively collegial. With the exception of two 
courses in the great College of Navarre, the lectures, disputations, 
and acts of the Theological Faculty were confined to the college 
of the Sorbonne ; and the Sorbonne thus became convertible with 
the Theological Faculty of Paris. During the latter half of the 
fifteenth century, the "famous Colleges," or those " of complete 
exercise," (cc. magna, celebria, famosa, famata, de plein exercise.) 
in the Faculty of Arts, amounted to eighteen, — a number which, 
before the middle of the seventeenth, had been reduced to ten. 
About eighty others, (cc. parva, non celebria,) of which above 
a half still subsisted in the eighteenth century, taught either only 
the subordinate branches of the faculty, (grammar and rhetoric,) 
and this only to those on the foundation, or merely afforded habi- 
tation and stipend to their bursars, now admitted to education in 
all the larger colleges, with the illustrious exception of Navarre. 
The Rue de la Fouarre, (vicus stramineus,) which contained the 
schools belonging to the different Nations of the Facidty, and to 
which the lectures in philosophy had been once exclusively con- 
fined, became less and less frequented ; until at last the public 
chair of Ethics, long perpetuated by an endowment, alone remained ; 
and " The Street" would have been wholly abandoned by the 
university, had not the acts of Determination, the forms of Incep- 
torship, and the Examinations of some of the Nations, still con- 
nected the Faculty of Arts with this venerable site. The colleges 
of full exercise in this faculty, continued to combine the objects of 
a classical school and university : for, besides the art of grammar 



406 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

taught in six or seven consecutive classes of humanity or ancient 
literature, they supplied courses of rhetoric, logic, metaphysics, 
physics, mathematics, and morals ; the several subjects, taught by 
different professors. A free competition was thus maintained 
between the Colleges ; the principals had every inducement to 
appoint only the most able teachers ; and the emoluments of the 
rival professors (who were not astricted to celibacy) depended 
mainly on their fees. A blind munificence quenched this useful 
emulation. In the year 1719, fixed salaries and retiring pensions 
were assigned by the crown to the College Regents ; the lieges 
at large now obtained the gratuitous instruction which the poor 
had always enjoyed, but the University gradually declined. 

After Paris, no continental University was more affected in its 
fundamental faculty by the collegial system than Louvain. Ori- 
ginally, as in Paris, and the other Universities of the Parisian 
model, the lectures in the Faculty of Arts were exclusively deli- 
vered by the regents in vico, or in the general schools, to each of 
whom a certain subject of philosophy, and a certain hour of teach- 
ing, was assigned. Colleges were founded ; and in some of these, 
during the fifteenth century, particular schools were established. 
The regents in these colleges were not disowned by the faculty, 
to whose control they were subjected. Here, as in Paris, the 
lectures by the regents in vico gradually declined, till at last the 
three public professorships of Ethics, Rhetoric, and Mathematics, 
perpetuated by endowment, were in the seventeenth century the 
only classes that remained open in the halls of the Faculty of 
Arts, in which, besides other exercises, the Quodlibetic Disputa- 
tions were still annually performed. The general tuition of that 
faculty was conducted in four rival colleges of full exercise, or 
Pmdagogia, as they were denominated, in contradistinction to the 
other colleges, which were intended less for the education, than 
for the habitation and aliment of youth, during their studies. 
These last, which amounted to above thirty, sent their bursars for 
education to the four privileged Colleges of the Faculty ; to one 
or other of which these minor establishments were in general 
astricted. In the Psedagogia, (with the single exception of the 
Collegium Porci,) Philosophy alone was taught, and this under 
the fourfold division of Logic, Physics, Metap>hys-ics, and Morals, 
by four ordinary professors and a principal. Instruction in the 
Littero3 Humaniores, was, in the seventeenth century, disconti- 
nued in the other throe, (cc. Castri, Lilii, Falconis) : —the earlier 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 407 

institution in this department being afforded by the oppidan 
schools then everywhere established ; the higher by the Collegium 
Gandense; and the highest by the three professors of Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew literature, in the Collegium Trilingue, founded 
in 1517, by Hieronymus Buslidius — a memorable institution, 
imitated by Francis I. in Paris, by Fox and Wolsey in Oxford, 
and by Ximenes in Alcala de Henares. In the Psedagogia the 
discipline was rigorous ; the diligence of the teachers admirably 
sustained by the rivalry of the different Houses ; and the emula- 
tion of the students, roused by daily competition in their several 
classes and colleges, was powerfully directed towards the great 
general contest, in which all the candidates for a degree in arts 
from the different Psedagogia were brought into concourse, — pub- 
licly and minutely tried by sworn examinators, — and finally 
arranged with rigorous impartiality in the strict order of merit. 
This competition for academical honours, long the peculiar glory 
of Louvain, is only to be paralleled by the present examinations 
in the English Universities ; * we may explain the former when 
we come to speak of the latter. — [See Reid's Works, p. 721 sq.] 

In Germany collegial establishments did not obtain the same 
preponderance as in the Netherlands and France. In the older 
universities of the empire, the academical system was not essen- 
tially modified by these institutions : and in the universities 
founded after the commencement of the sixteenth century, 
they were rarely called into existence. In Prague, Vienna, 
Heidelberg, Cologne, Erfurth, Leipsic, Rostoch, Ingolstadt, 
Tubingen, &c„ we find conventual establishments for the habita- 
tion, aliment, and superintendence of youth ; but these, always 
subsidiary to the public system, were rarely able, after the revival 
of letters, to maintain their importance even in this subordinate 
capacity. 

In Germany, the name of College was usually applied to founda- 
tions destined principally for the residence and support of the 
academical teachers ; the name of Bursa was given to houses 
inhabited by students, under the superintendence of a graduate in 
arts. In the colleges, which were comparatively rare, if scholars 
were admitted at all, they received free lodging or free board, 

* We suspect that the present Cambridge scheme of examination and 
honours was a direct imitation of that of Louvain. The similarity in certain 
points seems too precise to be accidental. The deplorable limitation of the 
latter, is of course quite original. — [See Appendix iii.] 



408 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

but not free domestic tuition ; they were bound to be diligent in 
attendance on the lectures of the public readers in the University-; 
and the governors of the house were enjoined to see that this 
obligation was faithfully performed. The Bursa?, which corre- 
sponded to the ancient Halls of Oxford and Cambridge, prevailed 
in all the older Universities of Germany. They were either 
benevolent foundations for the reception of a certain class of 
favoured students, who had sometimes also a small exhibition for 
their support (bb. privatce) : or houses licensed by the Faculty of 
Arts, to whom they exclusively belonged, in which the students 
admitted were bound to a certain stated contribution (positio) to a 
common exchequer (bursa — hence the name), and to obedience to 
the laws by which the discipline of the establishment was regu- 
lated, (bb. communes.) Of these varieties, the second was in 
general engrafted on the first. Every bursa was governed by a 
graduate (rector, conventor ;) and in the larger institutions, under 
him, by his delegate (conrector) or assistants (magistri conven- 
tores.) In most Universities it was enjoined that every regular 
student in the Faculty of Arts should enrol himself of a burse ; 
but the burse was also frequently inhabited by masters engaged 
in public lecturing in their own, or in following the courses of a 
higher faculty. To the duty of Rector belonged a general 
superintendence of the diligence and moral conduct of the inferior 
members, and (in the larger bursa?, with the aid of a procurator 
or O3conomus) the management of the funds destined for the main- 
tenance of the house. As in the colleges of France and England, 
he could enforce discipline by the infliction of corporeal punish- 
ment. Domestic instruction was generally introduced into these 
establishments, but, as we said, only in subservience to the public. 
The rector, either by himself or deputies, repeated with his bur- 
sars their public lessons, resolved difficulties they might propose, 
supplied deficiencies in their knowledge, and moderated at the 
performance of their private disputations. 

The philosophical controversies which, during the Middle Ages, 
divided the universities of Europe into hostile parties, were waged 
with peculiar activity among a people, like the Germans, actuated, 
more than any other, by speculative opinion, and the spirit of sect. 
The famous question touching the nature of Univcrsals, which 
created a schism in the University of Prague, and thus founded 
the University of Leipsic; which formally separated into two, the 
faculty of arts (called severally the via antiqua or realist, and the 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 409 

via moderna or nominalist,) in Ingolstadt, Tubingen, Heidelberg, 
&c. ; and. occasioned a ceaseless warfare in the other schools of 
philosophy throughout the empire : — this question modified the 
German bursa? in a far more decisive manner than it affected the 
colleges in the other countries of Europe. The Nominalists and 
Realists withdrew themselves into different bursa?; whence, as 
from opposite castles, they daily descended to renew their clamor- 
ous, and not always bloodless contests, in the arena of the public 
schools. In this manner the bursa? of Ingolstadt, Tubingen, 
Heidelberg, Erfurth, and other universities, were divided between 
the partisans of the Via Antiquorum, and the partisans of the 
Via Modernorum ; and in some of the greater schools the several 
sects of Realism — as the Albertists, Thomists, Scotists, — had bur- 
sa? of their " peculiar process ." — [Thus in Cologne.] 

The effect of this was to place these institutions more absolutely 
under that scholastic influence which swayed the faculties of arts 
and theology ; and however adverse were the different sects, 
when a common enemy was at a distance, no sooner was the 
reign of scholasticism threatened by the revival of polite letters, 
than their particular dissensions were merged in a general 
syncretism to resist the novelty equally obnoxious to all, — a 
resistance which, if it did not succeed in obtaining the absolute 
proscription of humane literature in the Universities, succeeded, 
at least, in excluding it from the course prescribed for the degree 
in arts, and from the studies authorised in the bursa?, of which 
that faculty had universally the control.* In their relations to 
the revival of ancient learning, the bursa? of Germany, and the 
colleges of France and England, were directly opposed ; and to 
this contrast is, in part, to be attributed the difference of their 
fate. The colleges, indeed, mainly owed their stability, — in 
England to their wealth, — in France to their coalition with the 
University. But in harbouring the rising literature, and render- 
ing themselves instrumental to its progress, the colleges seemed 
anew to vindicate their utility, and remained, during the revolu- 
tionary crisis at least, in unison with the spirit of the age. The 
bursal, on the contrary, fell at once into contempt with the anti- 
quated learning which they so fondly defended ; and before they 
were disposed to transfer their allegiance to the dominant litera- 
ture, other instruments had been organized, and circumstances 

* [See the article on the Epistolct Obscurorum Virorum.~] 



410 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

had superseded their necessity. The philosophical faculty to 
which they belonged, had lost, by its opposition to the admission 
of humane letters into its course, the consideration it formerly 
obtained ; and in the Protestant Universities of the Empire a 
degree in Arts was no longer required as a necessary passport to 
the other faculties. The Gymnasia, established or multiplied on 
the Reformation throughout Protestant Germany, sent the youth 
to the universities with sounder studies, and at a maturer age ; 
and the public prelections, no longer intrusted to the fortuitous 
competence of the graduates, were discharged, in chief, by Profes- 
sors carefully selected for their merit, — rewarded in exact propor- 
tion to their individual value in the literary market, — and stimu- 
lated to exertion by a competition unexampled in the academical 
arrangements of any other country. The discipline of the bursse 
was now found less useful in aid of the University ; and the 
student less disposed to submit to their restraint. No wealthy 
foundations perpetuated their existence independently of use ; 
and their services being found too small to warrant their main- 
tenance by compulsory regulations, they were soon generally 
abandoned. — [The name Bursch (student) alone survives.] 

In the English Universities, the history of the collegial element 
has been very different. Nowhere did it deserve to exercise so 
small an influence ; nowhere has it exercised so great. The col- 
leges of the continental Universities were no hospitals for drones ; 
their foundations were exclusively in favour of teachers and learn- 
ers ; the former, whose number was determined by their necessity, 
enjoyed their stipend under the condition of instruction ; and the 
latter, only during the period of their academical studies. In the 
English colleges, on the contrary, the fellowships, with hardly an 
exception, are perpetual, not burdened with tuition, and indefinite 
in number. In the foreign colleges, the instructors were chosen 
from competence. In those of England, but especially in Oxford, 
the fellows in general owe their election to chance. Abroad, as 
the colleges were visited, superintended, regulated, and reformed 
by their faculty, their lectures were acknowledged by the Univer- 
sity as public courses, and the lecturers themselves at last recog- 
nised as its privileged professors. In England, as the University 
did not exercise the right of visitation over the colleges, their 
discipline was viewed as private and subsidiary ; while the fellow 
was never recognised as a public character at all, far less as a 
privileged instructor. Tn Paris and Louvain, the college discipline 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION—COLLEGES, ETC. 411 

superseded only the precarious lectures of the graduates at large.* 
In Oxford and Cambridge, it was an improved and improvable 
system of professorial education that the tutorial extinguished. 
In the foreign Universities, the right of academial instruction was 
deputed to a limited number of " famous colleges," and in these 
only to a full body of co-operative teachers. In Oxford, all aca- 
demical education is usurped, not only by every house, but by 
every fellow-tutor it contains. The alliance between the Colleges 
and University in Paris and Louvain was, in the circumstances, 
perhaps a rational improvement ; the dethronement of the Uni- 
versity by the Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, without doubt, 
a preposterous, as an illegal, revolution. 

It was the very peculiarity in the constitution of the English 
colleges which disqualified them, above all similar incorporations, 
even for the lower offices of academical instruction, that enabled 
them in the end to engross the very highest ; and it only requires 
an acquaintance with the history of the two Universities, to 
explain how a revolution so improbable in itself, and so disastrous 
in its effects, was by the accident of circumstances, and the influ- 
ence of private interest, accomplished. " Reduce," says Bacon, 
" things to their first institution, and observe how they have 
degenerated." This explanation, limited to Oxford, will be given 
by showing : — 1°, How the students, once distributed in numerous 
small societies through the halls, were at length collected into a 
few large communities within the colleges ; 2°, How in the colleges, 
thus the penfolds of the academical flock, the fellows frustrated 
the common right of graduates to the office of tutor ; and 3°, 
How the fellow-tutors supplanted the professors, — how the colleges 
superseded the University. 

1. In the mode of teaching, — in the subjects taught, — in the 

* In Paris (1562) the celebrated Ramus proposed a judicious plan of 
reform for the Faculty of Arts. He disapproved of the lectures on philoso- 
phy established in the colleges ; and was desirous of restoring these to the 
footing of the public courses delivered for so many centuries in the Rue de la 
Fouarre, and only suspended a few years previously. He proposed, that 
eight accredited professors should there teach the different branches of mathe- 
matics, physics, and morals ; while the colleges should retain only instruction 
in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. This was to bring matters towards the very 
statutory constitution subverted in the English Universities by the colleges, 
and which, with all its imperfections, was even more complete than that pro- 
posed by Ramus, as an improvement on a collegial mechanism of tuition, 
perfection itself, in comparison to the intrusive system of Oxford. 



412 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD. 

forms of graduation, — and in the general mechanism of the 
faculties, no Universities, for a long time, resembled each other 
more closely than the " first and second schools of the church," 
Paris and Oxford ; but in the constitution and civil polity of the 
bodies, there were from the first considerable differences. — In 
Oxford, the University was not originally established on the dis- 
tinction of Nations ; though, in the sequel, the great national 
schism of the Northern and Southern men had almost determined 
a division similar to that which prevailed from the first in the 
other ancient Universities.* — In Oxford, the Chancellor and his 
deputy combined the powers of the Rector and the two Chancel- 
lors in Paris ; and the inspection and control, chiefly exercised in 
the latter, through the distribution of the scholars of the Univer- 
sity into Nations and Tribes, under the government of Hector, 
Procurators, and Deans, was in the former more especially accom- 
plished by collecting the students into certain privileged Houses, 
under the control of a Principal responsible for the conduct of the 
members. This subordination was not indeed established at once ; 
and the scholars at first lodged, without domestic superintendence, 
in the houses of the citizens. In the year 1231, we find it only 
ordained, by royal mandate, " that every clerk or scholar resident 
in Oxford or Cambridge, must subject himself to the discipline 
and tuition of some Master of the Schools, \ i. e., we presume, enter 
himself as the peculiar disciple of one or other of the actual 
Regents. (Wood and Fuller's Annals, a. c.) — In the same year 
Taxators are established in both universities. (See Fuller, who 
gives that document at length.) — By the commencement of the 
fifteenth century, it appears, however, to have become established 
law, that all scholars should be members of some College, Hall, 
or Entry, under a responsible head, (Wood, a. 1408 ;) and in the 
subsequent history of the university, we find more frequent and 
decisive measures taken in Oxford against the Chamberdekyns, 
or scholars haunting the schools, but of no authorized house, 
than in Paris were ever employed against the Martinets. — 

* Matters went so far, that as, in Paris, each of the four Nations elected 
its own Procurator, so, in Oxford, (what is not mentioned by Wood,) the 
two Proctors (procuratores) were necessarily chosen, one from the Northern, 
the other from the Southern men ; also the two Scrutators, anciently dis- 
tinct (?) from the Proctors. — [For Cambridge, see Peacock, pp. 28, 111.] 

t [Fuller has magistro scholarium, in which case it should be translated 
master of scholars. Compare Bula?us, ii. 63.] 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 413 

(Wood, aa. 1413, 1422, 1512, &c.)— In the foreign Universities 
it was never incumbent on any, beside the students of the Fa- 
culty of Arts, to be under collegial or bursal superintendence ; in 
the English Universities, the graduates and undergraduates of 
every faculty were equally required to be members of a privileged 
house. 

By this regulation, the students were compelled to collect them- 
selves into houses of community, variously denominated Halls, 
Inns, Hostles, Entries, Chambers, (Aulae, Hospitia, Introitus, 
Camerae.) These Halls were governed by peculiar statutes esta- 
blished by the University, by whom they were also visited and 
reformed; and administered by a Principal, elected by the scholars 
themselves, but admitted to his office by the chancellor or his 
deputy, on finding caution for payment of the rent. The halls 
were in general held only on lease ; but by a privilege common 
to most Universities, houses once occupied by clerks or students 
could not again be resumed by the proprietor, or taken from the 
gown, if the rent were punctually discharged, the rate of which 
was quinquennially fixed by the academical taxators. The great 
majority of the scholars who inhabited these halls lived at their 
own expense ; but the benevolent motives which, in other coun- 
tries, determined the establishment of colleges and private bursse, 
nowhere operated more powerfully than in England.* In a few 
houses, foundations were made for the support of a certain number 
of indigent scholars, who were incorporated as fellows, (or joint 
participators in the endowment,) under the government of a head. 
But with an unenlightened liberality, these benefactions were not, 
as elsewhere, exclusively limited to learners, during their aca- 
demical studies, and to instructors ; they were not even limited 
to merit ; while the subjection of the Colleges to private statutes, 
and their emancipation from the control of the academical autho- 
rities, gave them interests apart from those of the public, and not 
only disqualified them from co-operating towards the general ends 

* Lipsius, after speaking of the Paedagogia of Louvain, where he was 
Professor: — " Pergamus ; nam et aliud Collegiorum genus est, ubi non tarn 
docetur quarn alitur juvenilis, et subsidia studiorum in certos annos habet. 
Pulchrum inventum, et quod in Anglia magnifice usurpatur ; neque enim in 
orbe terrarum simile esse, addam et fuisse. Magnae illic opes et vectigalia : 
verbo vobis dicam ? Unura Oxoniense collegium (rem inquisivi) superet vel 
decern nostra." (Lovanium, 1. iii. c. 5. — See also Polydori Virgilii Angl. 
Hist. 1. v. p. 107, edit. Basil.) 



414 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD. 

of the University, but rendered them, instead of powerful aids, 
the worst impediments to its utility. 

The Colleges, into which commoners, or members not on the 
foundation, were, until a comparatively modern date, rarely 
admitted, (and this admission, be it noted, is to the present hour 
wholly optional,) remained also for many centuries few in compa- 
rison with the Halls. The latter were counted by hundreds ; the 
former, in Oxford, even at the present day, extend only to nine- 
teen. 

At the commencement of the fourteenth century, the number of 
the halls was about three hundred, (Wood, a. 1307) — the number 
of the secular colleges, at the highest, only three. — At the com- 
mencement of the fifteenth century, when the colleges had risen 
to seven, a Fellow of Queen's laments, that the students had dimi- 
nished as the foundations had increased. (Ullerston, Defensorium, 
fyc. written 1401.) — [John Major, who was incorporated, at least, 
in Cambridge, in his curious picture of the English Universities, 
records, that, at the close of the fifteenth century, there were " in 
each, from four to five thousand scholars, all grown up, carrying 
swords and bows, and, in great part, gentry." (De Gestis Scoto- 
rum, L. i. c. 5.)] — At the commencement of the sixteenth century, 
the number of halls had fallen to fifty-five, (Wood, a. 1503,) while 
the secular colleges had, before 1516, been multiplied to twelve. 
— The causes which had hitherto occasioned this diminution in the 
number of scholars, and in the number of the houses destined for 
their accommodation, were, among others, the plagues, by which 
Oxford was so frequently desolated, and the members of the Uni- 
versity dispersed, — the civil wars of York and Lancaster, — the 
rise of other rival Universities in Great Britain and on the Conti- 
tinent, — and, finally, the sinking consideration of the scholastic 
philosophy.* The character which the Reformation assumed in 
England, co-operated, however, still more powerfully to the same 
result. Of itself, the schism in religion must necessarily have 
diminished the resort of students to the University, by banishing 
those who did not acquiesce in the new opinions there inculcated 
by law ; while among the reformed themselves, there arose an 
influential party, who viewed the academical exercises as sophisti- 

* The same decline was, at this period, experienced in the continental 
Universities. See the article on the Epist. Obs. Vir. pp. 208, 209 of this 
volume, Note f- 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION-COLLEGES, ETC. 415 

cal, and many who even regarded degrees as Antichristian. But 
in England the Reformation incidentally operated in a more pecu- 
liar manner. Unlike its fate in other countries, this religious 
revolution was absolutely governed by the fancies of the royal 
despot for the time ; and so uncertain was the caprice of Henry, 
so contradictory the policy of his three immediate successors, 
that for a long time it was difficult to know what was the religion 
by law established for the current year, far less possible to cal- 
culate, with assurance, on what would be the statutory orthodoxy 
for the ensuing. At the same time, the dissolution of the monastic 
orders dried up one great source of academical prosperity ; while 
the confiscation of monastic property, which was generally 
regarded as only a foretaste of what awaited the endowments of 
the Universities, and the superfluous revenues of the clergy, ren- 
dered literature and the church, during this crisis, uninviting 
professions, either for an ambitious, or (if disinclined to martyr- 
dom) for a conscientious man. The effect was but too apparent ; 
for many years the Universities were almost literally deserted* 

* In the year 1539, the House of Convocation complains, in a letter 
addressed to Secretary Cromwell, that " the University, within the last five 
years, is greatly impaired, and the number of students diminished by one 
half." — In a memorable epistle, some ten years previous, to Sir Thomas More, 
the same complaint had been still more strenuously urged : — " Pauperes 
enim sumus. Olim singuli nostrum annuum stipendium habuimus, aliqui a 
Nobilibus, nonnulli ab his qui Monasteriis praesunt, plurimi a Presbyteris 
quibus ruri sunt sacerdotia. Nunc vero tantum abest ut in hoc perstemus, 
ut illi quibus debeant solitum stipendium dare recusant. Abbates enim suos 
Monachos domum accersunt, Nobiles suos liberos, Presbyteri suos consan- 
guineos : sic minuitur scholasticorum numerus, sic ruunt Aulce nostra, sic fri- 
gescunt omnes liberales disciplinse. Collegia solum perseverant ; qua? si quid 
solvere cogantur, cum solum habeant quantum sufficit in victum suo scholas- 
ticorum numero, necesse erit, aut ipsa una labi, aut socios aliquot ejici. 
Vides jam, More, quod nobis omnibus immineat periculum. Vides ex 
Academia futuram non Academiam, nisi tu cautius nostram causam egeris." 
(Wood, a. 1539, 1540.) — In 1546, in which year* the number of graduations 
had fallen so low as thirteen, the inhabited halls amounted only to eight, and 
even of these several were nearly empty. (Wood, a. 1546.) — About the 
same time, the celebrated Walter Haddon laments, that in Cambridge " the 
schools were never more solitary than at present ; so notably few indeed are 
the students, that for every master that reads in them there is hardly left an 
auditor to listen." (Lucubrationes, p. 12, edit. 1567.) — u In 1551," says the 
Oxford Antiquary, " the colleges, and especially the ancient halls, lay either 
waste, or were become the receptacles of poor religious people turned out of 
their cloisters. The present halls, especially St Edmund's and New Inn, were 
void of students." (a. 1551.)— And again : " The truth is, though the whole 



416 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

The Halls, whose existence solely depended on the confluence 
of students, thus fell ; and none, it is probable, would have sur- 
vived the crisis, had not several chanced to be the property of 
certain colleges, which had thus an interest in their support. The 
Halls of St Alban, St Edmund, St Mary, New Inn, Magdalen, 
severally belonged to Merton, Queen's, Oriel, New, and Magdalen 
Colleges ; and Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, Gloucester 
Hall, now Worcester College, and Hert Hall, subsequently Hert- 
ford College, owed their salvation to their dependence on the foun- 
dations of Christ Church, St John's, and Exeter. — [In Cambridge 
the Hostles ended in 1540 (Fuller.) Halls are there Colleges.] 

The circumstances which occasioned the ruin of the halls, 
and the dissolution of the cloisters and colleges of the monastic 
orders in Oxford, not only gave to the secular colleges, which all 
remained, a preponderant weight in the University for the junc- 
ture ; but allowed them so to extend their circuit and to increase 
their numbers, that they were subsequently enabled to compre- 
hend within their walls nearly the whole of the academical popu- 
lation, though, previously to the sixteenth century, they appear 
to have rarely, if ever, admitted independent members at all.* 
As the students fell oif, the rents of the halls were taxed at a 
lower rate ; and they became, at last, of so insignificant a value 
to the landlords, who could not apply it to other than academical 
purposes, that they were always willing to dispose of this fallen 
and falling property for the most trifling consideration. In 
Oxford, land and houses became a drug. The old colleges thus 
extended their limits, by easy purchase, from the impoverished 
burghers ; and the new colleges, of which there were four esta- 
blished within half a century subsequent to the Reformation, and 
altogether six during the sixteenth century, were built on sites 

number of students were now a thousand and fifteen, that had names in the 
buttery books of each house of learning, yet the greater part were absent, 
and had taken their last farewell." (a. 1552.) — " The two wells of learning," 
says Dr Bernard Gilpin in 1552, — " the two wells of learning, Oxford and 
Cambridge, are dried up, students decayed, of which scarce an hundred are 
left of a thousand ; and if in seven years more they should decay so fast, 
there would be almost none at all ; so that the devil would make a triumph, 
whilst there were none learned to whom to commit the flock." {Sermons 
preached at Court, edit. 1630, p. 23. — See also Wood, aa. 1561, 1563. — 
[Fuller's Cambridge, Todd's Life of Cranmer, Peacock's Statutes, &c] 

* See statute of 1489, quoted in Dr Newton's University Education, p. 9. 
from Darrel's transcript of the ancient statutes, preserved in the Bodleian. 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 417 

either obtained gratuitously or for an insignificant price. After 
this period only one college was founded — in 1610 ; and three of 
the eight halls transmuted into colleges, in 1610, 1702, and 1740 ; 
but of these one is now extinct. 

These circumstances explain how the halls declined and fell ; 
it remains to explain, why, in the most crowded state of the Uni- 
versity, not one subsequently was ever restored. — Before the 
era of their downfall, the establishment of a hall was easy. It 
required only, that a few scholars should hire a house, find cau- 
tion for a year's rent and choose for Principal a graduate of 
respectable character. The Chancellor, or his Deputy, could 
not refuse to sanction the establishment. An act of usurpation 
abolished this facility. The general right of nomination to the 
Principality, and consequently to the institution, of halls, was, 
" through the absolute potency he had," procured by the Earl 
of Leicester, Chancellor of the University, about 1570 ; and it 
is now, by statute, vested in his successors.* In surrendering 
this privilege to the Chancellor, the Colleges were not blind to 
their peculiar interest. From his situation, that magistrate was 
sure to be guided by their heads : no hall has since arisen to 
interfere with their monopoly ; and the collegial interest, thus 
left without a counterpoise, and concentrated in a few hands, 
was soon able to establish an absolute supremacy in the Univer- 
sity. 

2. By statute, the office of Tutor is open to all graduates. 
This was, however, no barrier against the encroachment of the 
fellows ; and the simple graduate, who should attempt to make 
good his right — how could he succeed ? 

As the colleges only received as members those not on the 
foundation, for their own convenience, they could either exclude 
them altogether, or admit them under whatever limitations they 
might choose to impose. By University law, graduates were not 
compelled to lodge in college ; they were therefore excluded as 
unprofitable members, to make room for under-graduates, who 
paid tutor's fees, and as dangerous competitors, to prevent them 
from becoming tutors themselves. This exclusion, or the possi- 
bility of this exclusion, of itself prevented any graduate from 
commencing tutor, in opposition to the interest of the foundation 

* Wood's Hist, et Antiq. Univ. lib. ii. p. 339. Hist, and Antiq. of Coll. 
and Halls, p. 655. Statuta Aularia, sect. v. 

2d 



418 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

members. Independently of this, there were other circumstances 
which would have frustrated all interference with monopoly by 
the fellows ; but these we need not enumerate. 

3. Collegial tuition engrossed by the fellows, a more import- 
ant step was to raise this collegial tuition from a subsidiary to 
a principal.* Could the professorial system on which the univer- 
sity rested be abolished, the tutorial system would remain the 
one organ of academical instruction ; could the University be 
silently annihilated, the colleges would succeed to its name, its 
privileges, and its place. This momentous — this deplorable sub- 
version was consummated. We do not affirm that the end was 
ever clearly proposed, or a line of policy for its attainment ever 
systematically followed out. But circumstances concurred, and 
that instinct of self-interest which actuates bodies of men with 
the certainty of a natural law, determined, in the course of 
generations, a result, such as no sagacity would have anticipated 
as possible. After the accomplishment, however, a retrospect of 
its causes shows the event to have been natural, if not necessary. 

The subversion of the university is to be traced to that very 
code of laws on which its constitution was finally established. 
The academical body is composed of graduates and under-gra- 
duates in the four faculties of Arts, Theology, Law, and Medicine ; 
and the government of the University was of old exclusively 
committed to the Masters and Doctors assembled in Congregation 
and Convocation ; Heads of houses and college Fellows shared in 
the academical government only as they were full graduates, and 
as they were regents. The statutes ratified under the chancel- 
lorship of Laud, and by which the legal constitution of the Uni- 
versity is still determined, changed this republican polity into an 
oligarchical. The legislation and the supreme government were 
still left with the full graduates, the Masters and Doctors, and the 
character of Fellow remained always unprivileged by law. But 
the Heads of Houses, if not now first raised to the rank of a pub- 
lic body, were now first clothed with an authority such as rendered 
them henceforward the principal, — in fact, the sole administrators 
of the University weal.f And whereas in foreign Universities, 

* This third step in the revolution, which from its more important charac- 
ter we consider last, -was, however, accomplishing simultaneously with the 
second, of which it was, in fact, almost a condition. 

t Anciently the right of previous discussion belonged to the House of 
Regency or Congregation. The omnipotent Earl of Leicester, to confirm his 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— FELLOW-TUTORS. 419 

the University governed the Colleges, — in Oxford the Colleges 
were enthroned the governors of the University. The Vice- 
chancellor, (now also necessarily a College Head,) the Heads of 
Houses, and the two Proctors, were constituted into a body, and 
the members constrained to regular attendance on an ordinary 
weekly meeting. To this body was committed, as their especial 
duty, the care of " inquiring into, and taking counsel for, the 
observance of the statutes and customs of the University ; and if 

hold over the University, and in spite of considerable opposition, constrained 
the Masters to surrender this function to a more limited and manageable body, 
composed of the Vice-chancellor, Doctors, Heads, (for the first time recognised 
as a public body) and Proctors (Wood a. 1569). [It does not appear that the 
Heads and Doctors hereby obtained the absolute initiative. They, as previously 
the Congregation, had only the right of prior deliberation, but not the right of 
preventing the introduction of ameasure into the academical legislature. (Wood 
ii. p. 167, sq.) ]. Laud, desirous of still farther concentrating the government, 
and in order to exercise himself a more absolute control, constituted the Heb- 
domadal Meeting of his very humble servants the Heads ; and to frustrate 
opposition from the House of Convocation to this momentous and unconsti- 
tutional change by precluding opposition, he forced the innovation on the 
University through royal statute. — The Cambridge Caput, whose powers 
were virtually first instituted by the Elizabethan statutes, forms a curious 
pendant to the Oxford Hebdomadal Meeting ; and in general, the history of 
the two Universities is a history of the same illegal revolution, accomplished 
by the same influence, under circumstances similar, but not the same. [The 
Caput comprises six members, to wit, the Vice-chancellor, the representa- 
tives of the three higher faculties of Theology, Civil Law, and Physic, and 
of the two Houses, the Regent and Non-Regent. It originates nothing, but 
each member has a veto effectual during the academical year. " There is 
no part of the constitution of the University" (says Dr Peacock, in his 
Observations on the Cambridge Statutes, 1841, p. 48) " so useful and neces- 
sary for many purposes, which has operated more injuriously to its interests, 
by the discouragements and obstacles which it has opposed to the consideration 
and enactment of measures of rational improvement.' 1 '' Again (says the same 
able and candid writer, p. 23) " the statutes of Elizabeth, by making the 
existence of the authority of this body permanent (during an entire acade- 
mical year), and by the mode of its appointment, placed the whole legislative 
powers of the University under the control of the Heads of Houses." How then 
can Dr Whewell {Cambridge Education, § 382) state, that " the Heads of 
Colleges have no special share in the legislation of the University, except as 
advisers of the Vice-chancellor ? " Nor can this be reconciled with the author- 
ity recognised as belonging to the Interpretations and Decrees of the Heads 
of Colleges ; these are regarded as of statutory obligation, and sworn to as 
such. See the learned Serjeant Miller's Account of the University of Cam- 
bridge, (cc. 3, 4, 6,) who commemorates these " benign interpretations" of the 
Reverend Heads by which white is coolly expounded to mean black, &c] 



420 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

there be aught touching the good government, the scholastic im- 
provement, the honour and usefulness of the University, which a 
majority of them may think worthy of deliberation, let them have 
poAver to deliberate thereupon, to the end that, after this their 
deliberation, the same may be proposed more advisedly in the 
Venerable House of Congregation, and then with mature counsel 
ratified in the Venerable House of Convocation." (T. xiii.) Thus, 
no proposal could be submitted to the houses of Congregation or 
Convocation, unless it had been previously discussed and sanc- 
tioned by the " Hebdomadal Meeting ;" and through this preli- 
minary negative,* the most absolute control was accorded to the 
heads of houses over the proceedings of the University. By their 
permission, every statute might be violated, and ever}'' custom fall 
into desuetude : without their permission, no measure of reform, 
or improvement, or discipline, however necessary, could be ini- 
tiated, or even mentioned. 

A body constituted and authorized like the Hebdomadal Meet- 
ing, could only be rationally expected to discharge its trust : 1°, 
if its members were subjected to a direct and concentrated respon- 
sibility ; and 2°, if their public duties were identical with their 
private interests. The Hebdomadal Meeting acted under neither 
of these conditions. 

In regard to the first, this body was placed under the review 
of no superior authority either for what it did, or for what it did 
not, perform ; and the responsibility to public opinion was distri- 
buted among too many to have any influence on their collective 
acts. " Corporations never blush." 

In regard to the second, so far were the interests and duties of 
the heads from being coincident, that they were diametrically 
opposed. Their public obligations bound them to maintain and 
improve the system of University education, of which the profes- 
sors were the organs ; but this system their private advantage, 
both as individuals and as representing the collcgial interest, 
prompted them to deteriorate and undermine. 

When the Corpus Statutorum was ratified, there existed two 
opposite influences in the University, either of which might have 

* And as if this preliminary negative were not enough, there was conceded 
by the same statutes to the single college head who holds for the time the 
office of Vice-chancellor, an absolute veto upon all proceedings in the houses 
of congregation and convocation themselves. In Cambridge a preliminary 
veto is enjoyed by every member of the Caput — Caput Senatus. 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 421 

pretended to the chief magistracy, — the Heads of Houses and the 
Professors. The establishment of the Hebdomadal Meeting by 
Laud, gave the former a decisive advantage, which they were not 
slack in employing against their rivals. 

In their individual capacity, the Heads, samples of the same 
bran with the Fellows, from whom and by whom they were elected, 
owed in general their elevation to accidental circumstances ; and 
their influence, or rather that of their situation, was confined to 
the members of their private communities. The Professors, the 
elite of the University, and even (of old) not unfrequently called 
for their celebrity from other schools and countries, were profes- 
sedly chosen exclusively from merit ; and their position enabled 
them to establish, by ability and zeal, a paramount ascendency 
over the whole academical youth. 

As men, in general, of merely ordinary acquirements, — holding 
in their collegial capacity only an accidental character in the 
University, — and elevated, simply in quality of that character, by 
an act of arbitrary power to an unconstitutional pre-eminence ; 
the Heads were, not unnaturally, jealous of the contrast exhibited 
to themselves by a body like the Professors, who, as the principal 
organs, deserved to constitute in Oxford, what in other Universi- 
ties they actually did, its representatives and governors. Their 
only hope was in the weakness of their rivals. It was easily per- 
ceived, that in proportion as the professorial system of instruction 
was improved, the influence of the professorial body would be 
increased ; and the Heads were conscious, that if that system 
were ever organized as it ought to be, it would no longer be pos- 
sible for them to maintain their own factitious and absurd omni- 
potence in the academical polity. 

Another consideration also co-operated. A temporary decline 
in the University had occasioned the desertion of the Halls ; a 
few houses had succeeded in collecting within their walls the 
whole academical population ; and the heads of these few houses 
had now obtained a preponderant influence in the University. 
Power is sweet ; and its depositaries were naturally averse from 
any measure which threatened to diminish their consequence, by 
multiplying their numbers. The existing Colleges and Halls 
could afford accommodation to a very limited complement of 
students. The exclusive privileges attached in England to an 
Oxford or Cambridge degree in law, in medicine, and above all, 
in the church, filled the colleges, independently of any merit in 



422 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

the academical teachers. But were the University restored to 
its ancient fame, — did students again flock to Oxford, as they 
flocked to Leyden and Padua, the Halls must again be called into 
existence, or the system of domestic superintendence be aban- 
doned or relaxed. The interest of the Heads was thus directly 
opposed to the celebrity of the professorial body, both in itself, 
and in its consequences. The University must not at most tran- 
scend the standard of a decent mediocrity. Every thing, in fact, 
that tended to keep the confluence of students within the existing 
means of accommodation, found favour with these oligarchs. 
Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles even at matriculation, 
imposed by the Calvinist Leicester, was among the few statutes 
not subsequently violated by the Arminian Heads ; the numbers 
of poor scholars formerly supported in all the Colleges were gra- 
dually discarded ; * the expenses incident on a University educa- 
tion kept graduated to the convenient pitch ; and residence after 
the first degree, for this and other reasons, dispensed with. 

At the same time, as representatives of the collegial interest, 
the Heads were naturally indisposed to discharge their duty 
towards the University. In proportion as the public or pro- 
fessorial education was improved, would it be difficult for the 
private or tutorial to maintain its relative importance as a 
subsidiary. The collegial tuition must either keep pace with 
the University prelections, or it must fall into contempt and 
desuetude. The student accustomed to a high standard in " the 
schools," would pay little deference to a low standard in the 
college. It would now be necessary to admit tutors exclusively 
from merit ; the fellows, no longer able to vindicate their mono- 
poly against the other graduates, would, in a general competi- 
tion, sink to their proper level, even in their own houses ; while, 
in the University, the collegial influence in general would be 

* Before the decline of the Halls, academical education cost nothing, and 
the poor student could select a society and house proportioned to his means, 
down even to the begging Logicians of Aristotle's Hall. The Colleges 
could hardly have prevented the restoration of the Halls, had they not 
for a considerable time supplied that accommodation to the indigent scholars 
to which the country had been accustomed. From the " Exact Account of 
the whole Number of Scholars and Students in the University of Oxford, 
taken anno 1612," it appears that about four hundred and fifty poor scholars 
and servitors then received gratuitous, or almost gratuitous, education and 
support in the Colleges. How many do so now ? 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 423 

degraded from the arbitrary pre-eminence to which accident had 
raised it. 

In these circumstances, it would have been quite as reasonable 
to expect that the Heads of Colleges should commit suicide to 
humour their enemies, as that they should prove the faithful 
guardians and the zealous promoters of the professorial system. 
On the contrary, by confiding this duty to that interest, it was in 
fact decreed, that the professorial system should, by its appointed 
guardians, be discouraged, — corrupted, — depressed, — and, if not 
utterly extinguished, reduced to such a state of inefficiency and 
contempt, as would leave it only useful as a foil to relieve the 
imperfections of the tutorial. And so it happened. The profes- 
sorial system, though still imperfect, could without difficulty have 
been carried to unlimited perfection; but the Heads, far from 
consenting to its melioration, fostered its defects in order to pre- 
cipitate its fall. 

In Oxford, as originally in all other Universities, salaried teach- 
ers or Professors were bound to deliver their prelections gratis. 
But it was always found that, under this arrangement, the pro- 
fessor did as little as possible, and the student undervalued what 
cost him nothing. " Gratis etfrnstra." Universities in general, 
therefore, corrected this defect. The interest of the Professor 
was made subservient to his diligence, by sanctioning, or winking 
at, his acceptance of voluntary gifts or honoraria from his audi- 
tors ; which, in most Universities, were at length converted into 
exigible fees. In Oxford, this simple expedient was not of course 
permitted by the Heads ; and what were the consequences ? The 
Hebdomadal Meeting had the charge of watching over the due 
observance of the statutes. By statute and under penalty, the 
Professors were bound to a regular delivery of their courses ; by 
statute and under penalty, the Students were bound to a regular 
attendance in the public classes ; and by statute, by oath, but not 
under penalty, the Heads were bound to see that both parties 
duly performed their several obligations. It is evident, that the 
Heads were here the keystone of the arch. If they relaxed in 
their censorship, the Professors, finding it no longer necessary to 
lecture regularly, and no longer certain of a regular audience, 
would, erelong, desist from lecturing at all ; * while the Students, 

* How well disposed the salaried readers always were to convert their 
chairs into sinecures, may be seen in Wood, aa. 1581, 1582, 1584, 1589, 
1590, 1594, 1596, 1608, &c. 



424 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

finding attendance in their classes no longer compulsory, and no 
longer sure of a lecture when they did attend, would soon cease 
to frequent the schools altogether. The Heads had only to vio- 
late their duties, by neglecting the charge especially intrusted to 
them, and the downfall of the obnoxious system was inevitable. 
And this they did. 

At the same time, other accidental defects in the professorial 
system, as constituted in Oxford, — the continuance of which was 
guaranteed by the body sworn " to the scholastic improvement 
of the University," — co-operated also to the same result. 

Fees not permitted, the salaries which made up the whole emo- 
luments attached to the different chairs were commonly too small 
to afford an independent, far less an honourable livelihood. They 
could therefore only be objects of ambition, as honorary appoint- 
ments, or supplemental aids. This limited the candidates to those 
who had otherwise a competent income ; and consequently threw 
them, in general, into the hands of the members of the collegial 
foundations, i. e. of a class of men on whose capacity or good 
intention to render the professorships efficient, there could be no 
rational dependence. 

Some, also, of the public lectureships were temporary ; these 
were certain to be negligently filled, and negligently taught. 

Another circumstance likewise concurred in reducing the stan- 
dard of professorial competence. The power of election, never 
perhaps intrusted to the safest hands, was in general even con- 
fided to those interested in frustrating its end. The appointment 
was often directly, and almost always indirectly, determined by 
college influence. In exclusive possession of the tutorial office, 
and non-residence as yet only permitted to independent gradu- 
ates, the fellows, in conjunction with the heads, came to constitute 
the great proportion of the resident members of Convocation and 
Congregation ; and therefore, except in cases of general interest, 
the elections belonging to the public bodies were sure to be 
decided by them.* 

* Since writing the above, we notice a carious confirmation in Terrm* 
Films. This work appeared in 1721, at the very crisis when the collegial 
interest was accomplishing its victory. The statements it contains were 
never, we believe, contradicted ; and though the following representation 
may be in some points exaggerated, the reader can easily recognise its sub- 
stantial truth. Speaking of the Professors: " I have known a profligate 
debauchee chosen professor of moral philosophy ; and a fellow, who never 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION-COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 425 

Nor was it possible to raise the tutorial system from its state 
of relative subordination, without an absolute subversion of the 
professorial. The tutor could not extend his discipline over the 
bachelor in arts, for every bachelor was by law entitled to com- 
mence tutor himself. But the colleges could not succeed in vindi- 
cating their monopoly even of the inferior branches of education, 
unless they were able also to incapacitate the University from 
affording instruction in the superior. For if the public lectures 
were allowed to continue in the higher faculties, and in the higher 
department of the lowest, it would be found impossible to justify 
their suppression in that particular department, which alone the 
college fellows could pretend to teach. At the same time, if 
attendance on the professorial courses remained necessary for 
degrees above bachelor in arts, a multitude of graduates, all com- 
petent to the tutorial office, would in consequence continue domi- 
ciled in the University, and the fellows' usurpation of that function 
it would be found impossible to maintain. With the colleges and 
fellows it was, therefore, all or nothing. If they were not to 
continue, as they had been, mere accessories to the University, it 
behoved to quash the whole public lectures, and to dispense with 
residence after the elementary degree. This the Heads of Houses 
easily effected. As the irresponsible guardians of the University 
statutes, they violated their trust, by allowing the professors to 
neglect their statutory duty, and empty standing to be taken 

looked upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy : we have 
had history professors, who never read any thing to qualify them for it, 
but Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Don Bellianis of Greece, and such 
like records : we have had likewise numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew, 
and Arabic, who scarce understood their mother tongue ; and not long ago, 
a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected Margaret Professor of 
Divinity ; so great, it seems, is the analogy between dusting cushions and 
shaking of elbows, or between squandering away of estates and saving of 
souls." And in a letter, from an under-graduate of Wadham : — "Now, it 
is monstrous, that notwithstanding these public lectures are so much neglected, 
we are all of us, when we take our degrees, charged with and punished for 
non-appearance at the reading of many of them ; a formal dispensation is 
read by our respective, deans, at the time our grace is proposed, for our non- 
appearance at these lectures, [~N. B.] and it is with difficulty that some grave 
ones of the congregation are induced to grant it. Strange order ! that each 
lecturer should have his fifty, his hundred, or two hundred pounds a-year for 
doing nothing ; and that we (the young fry) should be obliged to pay money 
for not hearing such lectures as were never read, nor ever composed." 
(No. X.) 



426 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

in lieu of the course of academical study, which it legally 
implied. 

The Professorial system was thus from the principal and neces- 
sary, degraded into the subordinate and superfluous ; the tutorial 
elevated, with all its additional imperfections, from the subsidiary, 
into the one exclusive instrument of education. In establishing: 
the ascendency of the collegial bodies, it mattered not that the 
extensive cycle of academical instruction was contracted to the 
narrow capacity of a fellow-tutor ; — that the University was anni- 
hilated, or reduced to half a faculty, — of one teachership, — which 
every " graduated dunce " might confidently undertake. The 
great interests of the nation, the church, and the professions, were 
sacrificed to the paltry ends of a few contemptible corporations ; 
and the privileges by law accorded to the public University of 
Oxford, as the authorised organ of national education, were by its 
perfidious governors furtively transferred to the unauthorised 
absurdities of their private — of their college discipline. 

That the representatives of the collegial bodies, as constituting 
the Hebdomadal Meeting, were the authors of this radical subver- 
sion of the establishment of which they were the protectors, — 
that the greatest importance was attached by them to its accom- 
plishment, — and, at the same time, that they were fully conscious 
of sacrificing the interests of the University and public to a private 
job ; — all this is manifested by the fact, that the Heads of Houses, 
rather than expose the college usurpations to a discussion by the 
academical and civil legislatures, not only submitted to the dis- 
grace of leaving their smuggled system of education without a 
legal sanction, but actually tolerated the reproach of thus con- 
verting the great seminary of the English Church into a school of 
perjury, without, as far as we know, an effort either at vindication 
or amendment. This grievous charge, though frequently advanced 
both by the friends and enemies of the establishment, we mention 
with regret ; we do not see how it can be rebutted, but shall be 
truly gratified if it can. Let us inquire. 

At matriculation, every member of the University of Oxford 
solemnly swears to an observance of the academical statutes, of 
which he receives a copy of the Excerpta, that he may be unable 
to urge the plea of ignorance for their violation ; and at every 
successive step of graduation, the candidate not only repeats 
this comprehensive oath, but after hearing read, by the senior 
Proctor, a statutory recapitulation of the statutes which pre- 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 427 

scribe the various public courses to be attended, and the various 
public exercises to be performed, as the conditions necessary for 
the degree, specially makes oath, " that having heard what was 
thus read, and having, within three days, diligently read or 
heard read, [the other statutes having reference to the degree 
he is about to take,] moreover the seventh section of the sixth 
title, that he has performed all that they require, those particulars 
excepted for which he has received a dispensation" (Stat. T. ii. 
§ 3, T. ix. S. vi. § 1 — 3.) The words in brackets are omitted in 
the re-enactment of 1808. (Add. T. ix. § 3.) 

Now, in these circumstances, does it not follow that every 
member of the University committs perjury, who either does not 
observe the statutory enactments, or does not receive a dispensa- 
tion for their non-observance ? 

Under the former alternative, false swearing is manifestly ine- 
vitable. Of the University laws, it is much easier to enumerate 
those which are not violated than those which are ; and the " Ex- 
cerpta Statutorum" which the intrant receives at matriculation, 
far from enabling him to prove faithful to his oath, serves only to 
show him the extent of the perjury, which, if he does not fly the 
University, he must unavoidably incur. Suffice it to say, that 
almost the only statutes now observed, are those which regulate 
matters wholly accidental to the essential ends of the institution, 
— as the civil polity of the corporation, or circumstances of mere 
form and ceremonial. The whole statutes, on the contrary, that 
constitute the being and the well-being of the University, as an 
establishment of education in general, and in particular, of educa- 
tion in the three learned professions, — these fundamental statutes 
are, one and all, absolutely reduced to a dead letter. And why ? 
Because they establish the University on the system ofprofessorial 
instruction. The fact is too notorious to be contradicted, that 
whilst every statute which comports with the private interest of 
the college corporations is religiously enforced, every statute 
intended to insure the public utility of the University, but incom- 
patible with their monopoly, is unscrupulously violated. 

The latter alternative remains ; but does dispensation afford a 
postern of escape ? — The statutes bestow this power exclusively 
on the Houses of Congregation and Convocation, and the limits of 
" Dispensable" and of " Indispensable Matter" are anxiously and 
minutely determined. Of itself, the very fact that there was 
aught indispensable in the system at all, might satisfy us, with- 



428 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

out farther inquiry, that at least the one essential part of its 
organization, through which the University, by law, accomplishes 
the purposes of its institution, could not be dispensed with ; for 
this would be nothing else than a dispensation of the University 
itself. But let us inquire further : — 

The original statute (Corp. St. T. ix. S. iv. § 2), determining 
the Dispensable Matter competent to the House of Congregation, 
was re-enacted, with some unimportant omissions, in 1801 and 
1808. (Add. pp. 136, 188.) By these statutes, there is allowed 
to that House the power of dispensation in twenty-three specified 
cases, of which the fourth — " Pro minus diligenti publicorum 
Lectorum auditione" — need alone be mentioned, as showing, by 
the only case in point, how limited is the power committed to 
Congregation, of dispensing with the essential business of the 
University. The students were unconditionally bound, by oath 
and statute, to a regular attendance on the different classes ; and 
a dispensation for the cause of " a just impediment" is here 
allowed to qualify, on equitable grounds, the rigour of the law. 
It will not be contended, that a power of dispensation allowed for 
the not altogether diligent attendance on the public readers, was 
meant by the legislature to concede a power of dispensing Avith 
all attendance on the professorial courses ; nay, of absolutely dis- 
pensing with these courses themselves. 

There has been no subsequent enactment, modifying the 
Laudian statutes touching the dispensing power of Convocation. 
This house, though possessing the right of rescinding old and of 
ratifying new laws, felt it necessary to restrict its prerogative of 
lightly suspending their application in particular cases, in order 
to terminate " the too great license of dispensation, which had 
heretofore lurought grievous detriment to the University." (Corp. 
St. T. x. S. ii. § 5.) Accordingly, under the head of Dispensable 
Matter, there is to be found nothing to warrant the supposition, 
that power is left with Convocation of dispensing with the regular 
lectures of all or any of its professors, or with attendance on 
these lectures by all or any of its scholars. On the contrary, it 
is only permitted, at the utmost, to give dispensation to an 
ordinary (or public) reader, who had been forced by necessity to 
deliver his lecture, through a substitute, without the regular 
authorization. (T. x. S. ii. § 4.) — Again, under the head of 
Indispensable Matter, those cases are enumerated in which the 
indulgence had formerly been abused. All defect of standing, 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 429 

(standing at that time meant length of attendance on the profes- 
sorial lectures,) all non-performance of exercise, either before or 
after graduation, are declared henceforward indispensable. But 
if the less important requisites for a degree, and in which a relax- 
ation had previously been sometimes tolerated, are now rendered 
imperative ; multo majus, must the conditions of paramount im- 
portance, such as delivery of, and attendance on, the public 
courses, be held as such, — conditions, a dispensation for which 
having never heretofore been asked, or granted, or conceived 
possible, a prospective prohibition of such abuse could never, by 
the legislature, be imagined necessary. At the same time, it is 
declared, that hereafter no alteration is to be attempted of the 
rules, by which founders, with consent of the University, had 
determined the duties of the chairs by them endowed ; and these 
rules, as thus modified and confirmed, constitute a great propor- 
tion of the statutes by which the system of public lectures is 
regulated. (T. x. S. ii. § 5.) — Under both heads, a general power 
is, indeed, left to the Chancellor, of allowing the Hebdomadal 
Meeting to propose a dispensation; but this only "from some 
necessary and very urgent cause" and " in cases which are not 
repugnant to academical discipline." We do not happen to know, 
and cannot at the moment obtain the information, whether there 
now is, or is not, a form of dispensation passed in convocation for 
the non-delivery of their lectures by the public readers, and for 
the non-attendance on these lectures by the students. Nor is the 
fact of the smallest consequence to the question. For either the 
statutes are violated without a dispensation, or a dispensation 
is obtained in violation of the statutes. [See next following 
article.] 

But as there is nothing in the terms of these statutes, however 
casuistically interpreted, to afford a colour for the monstrous 
supposition, that it was the intention of the legislature to leave 
to either house the power of arbitrarily suspending the whole 
mechanism of education established by law, that is, of dispensing 
with the University itself, whereas their whole tenor is only sig- 
nificant as proving the reverse ; let us now look at the " Epi- 
nomis, or explanation of the oath taken by all, to observe the sta- 
tutes of the University, as to what extent it is to be held binding," 
in which the intention of the legislature, in relation to the matter 
at issue, is unequivocally declared. This important article, 
intended to guard against all sophistical misconstruction of the 



430 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD. 

nature and extent of the obligation incurred by this oath, though 
it has completely failed in preventing its violation, renders, at 
least, all palliation impossible. 

It is here declared, that all are forsworn who wrest the terms 
of the statutes to a sense different from that intended by the 
legislature, or take the oath under any mental reservation. Con- 
sequently, those are perjured : 1°, who aver they have performed, 
or do believe, what they have not performed, or do not believe ; 
2°, they who, violating a statute, do not submit to the penalty 
attached to that violation ; 3°, they who proceed in their degrees 
without a dispensation for the non-performance of dispensable 
conditions, but much more they who thus proceed without actually 
performing those prerequisites which are indispensable. As to 
other delicts," (we translate literally,) " if there be no contempt, 
no gross and obstinate negligence of the statutes and their penal- 
ties ; and if the delinquents have submitted to the penalties sanc- 
tioned by the statutes, they are not to be held guilty of violating 
the religious obligation of their oath. Finally, as the reverence 
due to their character exempts the Magistrates of the Uni- 
versity from the common penalties of other transgressors; so on 
them there is incumbent a stronger conscientious obligation ; inas- 
much as they are bound not only to the faithful discharge of 
their own duties, but likewise diligently to take care that all 
others in like manner perform theirs. Not, however, that it is 
intended that every failure in their duties should at once involve 
them in the crime of perjury. But since the keeping and guar- 
dianship of the Statutes is intrusted to their fidelity, if (may it 
never happen !) through their negligence or sloth, they suffer any 
statutes whatever to fall into desuetude, and silently, as it were, to 
be abrogated, in that event we decree them guilty of broken 
faith and of perjury." What would these legislators have 
said, could they have foreseen that these " Reverend Magistrates 
of the University" should "silently abrogate" every funda- 
mental statute in the code of which they were the appointed 
— the sworn guardians ? 

It must, as we observed, have been powerful motives which 
could induce the Heads of Houses, originally to incur, or subse- 
quently to tolerate, such opprobrium for themselves and the Uni- 
versity ; nor can any conceivable motive be assigned for either, 
except that these representatives of the collegial interest were 
fully aware that the intrusive system was not one for which a 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 431 

sanction could be hoped from the academical and civil legislatures, 
while, at the same time, it was too advantageous for themselves 
not to be quietly perpetuated, even at such a price. 

We do not see how the Heads could throw off the charge of 
" broken faith and perjury," incurred by their " silent abroga- 
tion" of the University statutes, even allowing them the plea 
which some low moralists have advanced in extenuation of the 
perjury committed by the non-observance of certain College sta- 
tutes. * 

For, in the first place, this plea supposes that the observance 
of the violated statute is manifestly inconsistent with the end 
of the institution, towards which it only constituted a mean. 
Here, however, it cannot be alleged that the statutory, or pro- 
fessorial system, is manifestly inconsistent with the ends of a 
University ; seeing that all Universities, except the English, 
employ that instrument exclusively, and as the best; and that 
Oxford, under her new tutorial dispensation, has never manifestly 
been the exemplar of academical institutions. 

In the second place, even admitting the professorial system to 
be notoriously inconvenient, still the plea supposes that the in- 
convenience has arisen from a change of circumstances unknown 
to the lawgiver, and subsequent to the enactment. But in the 
present case, the only change (from the maturer age of the stu- 
dent,) has been to enhance the importance of the professorial 
method, and to diminish the expediency of the tutorial. 

But in the third place, such a plea is, in the present instance, 
incompetent altogether. This is not the case of a private founda- 
tion, where the lawgiver is defunct. Here the institution is 
public, — the lawgiver perpetual ; and he might at every moment 
have been interrogated concerning the repeal or observance of 
his statutes. That lawgiver is the House of Convocation. The 
heads in the Hebdomadal Meeting are constituted the special 
guardians of the academical statutes and their observance ; and, 
as we formerly explained, except through them, no measure can 
be proposed in Convocation for instituting new laws, or for render- 
ing old laws available. They have a ministerial, but no legislative 

* Pai.ey, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, b. ii. c. 21. His 
arguments would justify a repeal of such statutes by public authority, never 
their violation by private and interested parties, after swearing to their 
observance. 



432 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

function. Now the statutory system of public teaching fell into 
desuetude, either in opposition to their wishes and endeavours, or 
ivith their concurrence. 

The former alternative is impossible. Supposing even the 
means of enforcing the observance of the statutes to have been 
found incompetent, it was their duty both to the university and 
to themselves, to have applied to the legislative body for power 
sufficient to enable them to discharge their trust, or to be relieved 
of its responsibility. By law, they are declared morally and reli- 
giously responsible for the due observance of the statutes. No 
body of men would, without inducement, sit down under the brand 
of 6C violated faith and perjury." Now this inducement must 
have been either a, public, or a, private advantage. Public it could 
not have been. There is no imaginable reason, if the professorial 
system were found absolutely or comparatively useless, why its 
abolition or degradation should not have been openly moved in 
Convocation ; and why, if the tutorial system were calculated to 
accomplish all the ends of academical instruction, it should either 
at first have crept to its ascendency through perjury and treason, 
or, after approving its sufficiency, have still only enjoyed its 
monopoly by precarious toleration, and never demanded its ratifi- 
cation on the ground of public utility. If the new system were 
superior to the old, why hesitate to proclaim that the academical 
instruments were changed ? If Oxford were now singular in per- 
fection, why delusively pretend that her methods were still those 
of universities in general ? It was only necessary that the heads 
either brought themselves, or allowed to be brought by others, a 
measure into Convocation to repeal the obsolete and rude, and to 
legitimate the actual and improved. 

But as the heads never consented that this anomalous state of 
gratuitous perjury and idle imposition should cease, we are driven 
to the other alternative of supposing, that in the transition from 
the statutory to the illegal, the change was originally determined, 
and subsequently maintained, not because the surreptitious system 
was conducive to the public ends of the University, but because it 
was expedient for the interest of those private corporations, by 
whom this venerable establishment has been so long latterly admi- 
nistered. The collegial bodies and their heads were not ignorant 
of its imperfections, and too prudent to hazard their discussion. 
They were not to be informed that their policy was to enjoy what 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIA!, INTEREST. 433 

they had obtained, in thankfulness and silence ; not to risk the 
loss of the possession by an attempt to found it upon right. They 
could not but be conscious, that should they even succeed in 
obtaining — what was hardly to be expected — a ratification of 
their usurpations from an academical legislature, educated under 
their auspices, and strongly biassed by their influence, they need 
never expect that the State would tolerate, that those exclusive pri- 
vileges conceded to her graduates, when Oxford was a university 
in ivhich all the faculties were fully and competently taught, 
should be continued to her graduates, when Oxford no longer 
afforded the public instruction necessary for a degree in any 
faculty at all. The very agitation of the subject would have 
been a signal for the horrors of a Visitation. 

The strictures, which a conviction of their truth, and our interest 
in the honour and utility of this venerable school, have constrained 
us to make on the conduct of the Hebdomadal Meeting, we mainly 
apply to the heads of houses of a former generation, and even to 
them solely in their corporate capacity. Of the late and present 
members of this body, we are happy to acknowledge, that, during 
the last twenty-five years, so great an improvement has been 
effected through their influence, that in some essential points 
Oxford may, not unworthily, be proposed as a pattern to most 
other universities. But this improvement, though important, is 
partial, and can only receive its adequate development by a return 
to the statutory combination of the professorial and tutorial sys- 
tems. That this combination is implied in the constitution of a 
perfect university, is even acknowledged by the most intelligent 
individuals of the collegial interest, — by the ablest champions of 
the tutorial discipline : * such an opinion cannot, however, be 
expected to induce a majority of the collegial bodies voluntarily 
to surrender the monopoly they have so long enjoyed, and to 
descend to a subordinate situation, after having occupied a 
principal. All experience proves, that universities, like other 
corporations, can only be reformed from without. " Voila," says 
Crevier, speaking of the last attempt at a reform of the Univer- 
sity of Paris by itself — " voila a quoi aboutirent tant de projets, 
tant de deliberations : et cette nouvelle tentative, aussi infruc- 
tueuse que les precedentes, rend de plus en plus visible la maxime 

* Copplestone's Reply to the Calumnies, &e. p. 146. 
2 E 



434 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

claire en soi, que les campagnies ne se reforment point elles- 
memes, et qn'une entreprise de reforme oil n'intervient point nne 
autorite superieure, est une entreprise rnanquee." * A Committee 
of Visitation has lately terminated its labours on the Scottish 
Universities : we should anticipate a more important result from 
a similar, and far more necessary, inquiry into the corruptions of 
those of England. 

f Histoire de V Universite de Paris, t. vi. p. 370. 



V.-ON THE STATE OF THE ENGLISH 
UNIVERSITIES, 

AVITH MORE ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD. 
(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 



(December, 1831.) 

The Legality of the present Academical System of the University 
of Oxford, asserted against the new Calumnies of the Edin- 
burgh Review. By a Member of Convocation. 8vo. Oxford : 
1831. 

In a recent Number we took occasion to signalize one of the 
most remarkable abuses upon record. We allude to our article 
on the English Universities. Even in this country, hitherto the 
paradise of jobs, the lawless usurpation of which these venerable 
establishments have been the victims, from the magnitude of the 
evil, and the whole character of the circumstances under which it 
was consummated, stands pre-eminent and alone. With more 
immediate reference to Oxford, (though Cambridge is not behind 
hand in the delict,) it is distinguished, at once, for the extent to 
which the most important interests of the public have been sacri- 
ficed to private advantage, — for the unhallowed disregard, shewn 
in its accomplishment, of every moral and religious bond, — for 
the sacred character of the agents through whom the unholy 
treason was perpetrated, — for the systematic perjury which it 
has naturalized in this great seminary of religious education,- — 
for the apathy, wherewith the injustice has been tolerated by the 
State, the impiety by the Church,* — nay, even for the unac- 

* The Archbishop of Canterbury possesses, jure metropolitico, to say 
nothing of the inferior diocesans, the right of ordinary visitation of the two 



436 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

quaintance, so universally manifested, with so flagrant a corrup- 
tion. The history of the University of Oxford demonstrates by 
a memorable example : — That bodies of men will unscrupulously 
carry through, what individuals would blush even to attempt; 
and that the clerical profession, the obligation of a trust, the 
sanctity of oaths, afford no security for the integrity of function- 
aries, able with impunity to violate their public duty, and with a 
private interest in its violation. 

In being the first to denounce the illegality of the state of this 
great national school, and, in particular, to expose the heads of 
the Collegial interest as those by whom, and for whose ends, this 
calamitous revolution was effected, we were profoundly conscious 
of the gravity of the charge, and of the responsibility which we 
incurred in making it. Nothing, indeed, could have engaged us 
in the cause, but the firmest conviction of the punctual accuracy 
of our statement, — and the strong, but disinterested, wish to 
co-operate in restoring this noble University to its natural pre- 
eminence, by relieving it from the vampire oppression, under 
which it has pined so long in almost lifeless exhaustion. 

But though without anxiety about attack, we should certainly 
have been surprised had there been no attempt at refutation. 
It is the remark of Hobbes : — " If this proposition — the three 
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles — had been 
opposed to the advantage of those in authority, it would long ago 
have been denounced as heresy or high treason." The opinions 
of men in general are only the lackeys of their interest ; and with 
so many so deeply interested in its support, the present profitable 
system of corruption could not, in Oxford, find any scarcity of, 
at least, willing champions. At the same time it is always better, 
in speaking to the many, to say something, should it signify 
nothing, than to be found to say nothing at all. Add to this, 
that the partisans of the actual system had of late years shown 
themselves so prompt in repelling the most trivial objurgations, 
that silence, when the authors of that system were accused of the 
weightiest offences, and the system itself articulately displayed as 

Universities, in all matters of heresy, schism, and, in general, of religious 
concernment. English Bishops have been always anti-reformers ; and in the 
present instance they may have closed their eyes on its perjury, by finding 
that the illegal system, in bestowing on the College Fellows the monopoly 
of education, bestowed it exclusively on the Church. Before this usurpation 
the clergy only had their share of the University. 



OCCASION OF WRITING- STATE OF THE QUESTION. 437 

one glaring scheme of usurpation and absurdity, would have been 
tantamount to an overt confession of the allegation itself. If our 
incidental repetition of the old bye-word of " Oxonian Latin,"* 
brought down on us more than one indignant refutation of the 
" calumny;" our formal charge of Illegality, Treason, Perjury, 
and Corruption could not remain unanswered, unless those who 
yesterday were so sensitive to the literary glory of Oxford, were 
to-day wholly careless not only of that, but even of its moral 
and religious respectability ; — " Diligentius studentes loqui quam 
vivere." 

But how was an answer to be made ? This was either easy 
or impossible. If our statements were false, they could be at 
once triumphantly refuted, by contrasting them with a few short 
extracts from the Statutes ; and the favourable opinion of a 
respectable Lawyer would have carried as general a persuasion 
of the legality of the actual system, as the want of it is sure to 
carry of its illegality. In these circumstances, satisfied that no 
lawyer could be found to pledge his reputation in support of the 
legality of so unambiguous a violation of every statute, and that, 
without such a professional opinion, every attempt, even at a 
plausible reply, would be necessarily futile; we hardly hoped 
that the advocates of the present order of things would be so ill- 
advised as to attempt a defence, which could only terminate in 
corroborating the charge. We attributed to them a more wily 
tactic. The sequel of our discussion, (in which we proposed to 
consider in detail the comparative merits of the statutory and 
illegal systems, and to suggest some means of again elevating the 
University to what it ought to be,) might be expected to afford 
a wider field for controversy ; and we anticipated, that the objec- 
tion of illegality, now allowed to pass, would be ultimately slurred 

* Julius Cesar Scaliger Be Subtilitate, Exerc. xvi. 2 — " Loquar ergo 
meo more, barbare et ab Oxonio ;" and honest Anthony admits that " Oxo- 
niensis loquendi mos" was thus proverbially used. — Speaking of Scaliger and 
Oxford, we may notice that, from a passage in the same work, (Exerc. 
xcix.) it clearly appears that this transcendent genius may be claimed by 
Oxford, as among her sons. " Lutetiae aut Oxonii, modica induti togula, 
hy ernes non solum ferre, sed etiam frangere didicimus." The importance of 
this curious discovery, unsuspected by Scioppius, and contradictory of what 
Joseph Scaliger and all others have asserted and believed of the early life 
of his father, will be appreciated by those interested in the mysterious bio- 
graphy of this (prince or impostor) illustrious philosopher and critic. 



433 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

over, a reply to our whole argument being pretended under covert 
of answering a part. 

We were agreeably mistaken. The bulky pamphlet at the 
head of this article has recently appeared ; and we have to ten- 
der our best acknowledgments to its author, for the aid he has so 
effectually afforded against the cause he intentionally supports. 
This " Assertion (the word is happily appropriate !) of the Lega- 
lity of the present academical system of Oxford" manifests two 
things : — How unanswerable are our statements, when the oppo- 
nent, who comes forward professing to refute the " new and 
unheard-of calumny," never once ventures to look them in the 
face ; and, How intensely felt by the Collegial interest must be 
the necessity of a reply, — a reply at all hazards, — when a Mem- 
ber of the Venerable House of Convocation could stoop to such 
an attempt at delusion, as the present semblance of an answer 
exhibits. 

It may sound like paradox to say, that this pamphlet is no 
answer to our paper, and yet, that we are bound to accord it a 
reply. But so it is. Considered merely in reference to the 
points maintained by us, we have no interest in disproving its 
statements : for it is, in truth, no more a rejoinder to our reason- 
ing, than to the Principia of Newton. Nay less. For, in fact, 
our whole proof of the illegality of the present order of things in 
Oxford, and of the treachery of the College Heads, would be 
invalidated, were the single proposition, which our pretended 
antagonist so ostentatiously vindicates against us, not accurately 
true. We admit, that if we held what he refutes as ours, our 
positions would be not only false, but foolish ; nay, that if we had 
not established the very converse, as the beginning, middle, and 
end of our whole argument, this argument would not only be 
unworthy of an elaborate answer, but of any serious consideration 
at all. It is a vulgar artifice to misrepresent an adversary, to 
gain the appearance of refuting him ; but never was this contemp- 
tible manoeuvre so impudently and systematically practised. In 
so far as it has any reference to our reasoning, the whole pamphlet 
is, from first to last, just a deliberate reversal of all our statements. 
Its sophistry (the word is too respectable) is not an ignoratio, but 
a mutatio, elenchi; of which the lofty aim is to impose on the 
simplicity of those readers who may rely on the veracity of " A 
Member of Convocation," and are unacquainted with the paper, 



OCCASION OF WRITING— STATE OF THE QUESTION. 439 

the arguments of which he professes to state and to refute. 
Under so creditable a name, never was there a more discreditable 
performance ; for we are unable even to compliment the author's 
intentions at the expense of his talent. The plain scope of the 
publication is to defend perjury by imposture ; and its contents 
are one tissue of disingenuous concealments, false assertions, 
forged quotations, and infuriate railing. In its way, certainly, it 
is unique ; and we can safely recommend it to the curious as a 
bibliographical singularity, being perhaps the only example of a 
work, in which, from the first page to the last, it is impossible to 
find a sentence, not either irrelevant or untrue. 

But though a reply on our part would thus be — not a Refuta- 
tion but an Exposure ; a reply, for that very reason, we consider 
imperative. It forms a principal feature of the Assertor's 
scheme of delusion to accuse us of deceit, (and deceit, amounting 
to knavery, must certainly adhere to one party or the other ;) 
yet, though he has failed in convicting us even of the most unim- 
portant error, many readers, we are aware, might be found to 
accord credence to averments so positively made, to set down to 
honest indignation the virulence of his abuse, and to mistake his 
effrontery for good faith. Were it also matter of reasoning in 
which the fallacy was attempted, we might leave its detection to 
the sagacity of the reader ; but it is in matter of fact, of which 
we may well presume him ignorant. Aggressors, too, in the 
attack, the present is not a controversy in which we can silently 
allow our accuracy, far less our intentions, to be impugned by any. 
To establish, likewise, the illegality and self-admitted incompe- 
tence of the present academical system, is to establish the preli- 
minary of all improvement, — the necessity of change. While 
happy, therefore, to avail ourselves of the occasion in adding to 
our former demonstration of this all-important point ; we are not, 
of course, averse from manifesting how impotent, at once, and 
desperate, are the efforts which have been made to invalidate its 
conclusions. These considerations have moved us to bestow on 
the matter of this pamphlet an attention we should not assuredly 
have accorded to its merits. And as our reply is nothing but a 
manifestation of the contrast between the statements actually 
made by us, and those refuted, as ours, by our opponent ; we 
are thus compelled to recapitulate the principal momenta of our 
argument, of which we must not presume that our readers 
retain an adequate recollection. Necessity must, therefore, be 



440 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

oar excuse for again returning on a discussion, not less irksome 
to ourselves than others ; but we are reconciled to it by the con- 
sideration, that though we have no errors to correct, we have thus 
the opportunity of supplying, on this important subject, some not 
unimportant omissions. 

Our former paper was intended to prove three great pro- 
positions. — I. That the present academical system of Oxford is 
illegal. II. That it was surreptitiously intruded into the Univer- 
sity by the heads of the collegial interest, for private ends. III. 
That it is virtually acknowledged to be wholly inadequate to 
accomplish the purposes of a University, even by members of that 
interest, through whose influence, and for whose advantage, it is 
maintained. 

I. In illustration of the first proposition, we showed that the 
University of Oxford is a public instrument, privileged by the 
nation for the accomplishment of certain public purposes ; and 
that, for the more secure and appropriate performance of its 
functions, a power of self-legislation is delegated to the great 
body of its graduates, composing the House of Convocation. The 
resolutions of this assembly alone, or with concurrence of the 
Crown, form the Academical Statutes, and the statutes exclusively 
determine the legal constitution of the University. The whole 
academical statutes now in force, (with one or two passed, we 
believe, since 1826,) are collected and published in the Corpus 
Statutorum with its Appendix, and in its Addenda; the subse- 
quent statute of course, explaining, modifying, or rescinding the 
antecedent. 

Looking, therefore, to the Statutes, and the whole statutes,* we 

* As not sanctioned by Convocation, the illegality of the present system is 
flagrant. Bat had it been so sanctioned, it would still be fundamentally 
illegal ; as that body would have thus transcended its powers, by frustrating 
the ends, for the sake of which alone it was clothed with legislative authority 
at all. The public privileges accorded (by King or Parliament, it matters 
not,) to the education and degrees of a University, are not granted for the 
private behoof of the individuals in whom the University is realized. They are 
granted solely, for the public good, to the instruction of certain bodies organized 
under public authority, and to their certificate of proficiency, under condi- 
tions by that authority prescribed. If these bodies have obtained, to any 
extent, the right of self-legislation, it is only as delegates of the state ; and 
this right could only be constitutionally exercised by them in subservience to 
the public good, for the interest of which alone the University was consti- 
tuted and privileged, and this power of legislation itself delegated to its 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— ILLEGALITY. 441 

showed, that there were two academical systems to be distinguished 
in Oxford — a legal and an illegal; and that no two systems could 
be more universally and diametrically opposed. 

In the former, the end, for the sake of which the University is 
privileged by the nation, and that consequently imperatively pre- 
scribed by the statutes, is to afford public education in the facul- 
ties of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts, (to say nothing of the 
science of Music,) and to certify — by the grant of a degree — that 
this education had in any of these faculties been effectually 
received. — In the latter, degrees are still ostensibly accorded in 
all the faculties, but they are now empty, or rather delusive, dis- 
tinctions ; for the only education at present requisite for all 
degrees, is the private tuition afforded by the colleges in the ele- 
mentary department of the lowest faculty alone. Of ten degrees 
still granted in Oxford, all are given contrary to statute, and nine 
are in law and reason utterly worthless. 

In the former, it is, of course, involved as a condition, that the 
candidate for a degree shall have spent an adequate time in the 
university in prosecution of his public studies in that faculty in 
which he proposes to graduate. — In the latter, when the statutory 
education in the higher faculties, and the higher department of 
the lowest, was no longer afforded, this relative condition, though 
indispensable by law, is converted into empty standing. 

The former, as its principal mean, employs in every faculty a 
co-operative body of select Professors, publicly teaching in con- 
formity to statutory regulation. — The latter (in which the wretched 
remnant of professorial instruction is a mere hors oVozuvre) aban- 
dons the petty fragment of private education it precariously 
affords, as a perquisite, to the incapacity of an individual, Fellow 
by chance, and Tutor by usurpation. 

To conceive the full extent of the absurdity thus occasioned, it 
must be remembered, that no universities are so highly privileged 
by any country as the English ; and that no country is now so 
completely defrauded of the benefits, for the sake of which acade- 
mical privileges were ever granted, as England. England is the 
only Christian country, where the Parson, if he reach the univer- 
sity at all, receives only the same minimum of Theological tuition 

members. If an academical legislature abolish academical education, and 
academical trials of proficiency in the different faculties, it commits suicide, 
and as such, the act is, ipso facto, illegal. In the case of Oxford, Convoca- 
tion has not been thus felo de se. 



442 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL). 

as the Squire ; — the only civilized country, where the degree, 
which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly of practice, is 
conferred without either instruction or examination; — the only 
country in the world, where the Physician is turned loose upon 
society, with extraordinary and odious privileges, but without 
professional education, or even the slightest guarantee for his 
skill.* 

II. In proof of the second proposition we showed, — how, in 
subordination to the University, the Collegial interest arose ; — 
how it became possessed of the means of superseding the organ 
of which it was the accident ; — and what advantage it obtained in 
accomplishing this usurpation. 

We traced how Colleges, in general, as establishments for habi- 
tation, aliment, and subsidiary instruction, sprang up in connection 
with almost all the older universities throughout Europe. The 
continental colleges were either so constituted, as to form, at last, 
an advantageous alliance with the university, under the control of 
which the whole system of collegial instruction always remained ; 
or they declined and fell, so soon as they proved no longer useful 
in their subsidiary capacity. The English Colleges, on the other 
hand, were founded less for education than aliment ; were not 
subjected to the regulation of the university, with which they 
were never able, and latterly unwilling, to co-operate effectually ; 
and their fellowships were bestowed without the obligation of 
instructing, and for causes which had seldom a relation to literary 
desert. We showed how the colleges of Oxford, few in numbers, 
and limited in accommodation, for many centuries admitted only 
those who enjoyed the benefit of their foundations ; while the 
great majority of the academical youth inhabited the Halls, 
(houses privileged and visited by the university.) under the 
superintendence of principals elected by their own members. 

The crisis of the Reformation occasioned a temporary decline 
of the university, and a consequent suspension of the Halls ; the 
Colleges, multiplied in numbers, were enabled to extend their 
circuit ; though not the intention of the act, the restoration of the 
halls was frustrated by an arbitrary stretch of power ; the colleges 
succeeded in collecting nearly the whole scholars of the university 

* We doubt extremely, whether the Fellows of the Londou College of 
rhysicians could make good their privileges, if opposed on the ground that, 
by the statutes of the universities themselves, not one of them has legal 
right to a degree. A word to the wise. 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION-COLLEGES. 443 

within their walls ; and the Fellows, in usurping from the other 
graduates the new, and then insignificant, office of Tutor. At 
the same time, through the personal ambition of two all-powerful 
statesmen, the Chancellors Leicester and Laud, (with the view of 
subjecting the university to a body easily governed by themselves,) 
the Heads of Houses were elevated to a new and unconstitutional 
pre-eminence. By the former, in spite of every legitimate oppo- 
sition, these creatures of accident and private favour were raised 
to the rank of a public academical body ; and, along with the 
Doctors of the three higher faculties, and the two Proctors, con- 
stituted into an assembly, to which the prior discussion was con- 
ceded of all measures to be proposed in Convocation. By the 
latter, an absolute initiative, with other important powers, was, by 
the exclusion of the Doctors, given and limited to the Heads and 
Proctors, a body which, from its weekly diets, has obtained the 
name of the Hebdomadal Meeting ; and to obviate resistance to 
this arbitrary subjection of the university to this upstart and 
anomalous authority, the measure was virtually forced upon the 
House of Convocation by royal statute. The College Heads were 
now the masters of the university. They were sworn, indeed, to 
guarantee the observance of the laws, and to provide for their 
progressive melioration. But, if content to violate their obliga- 
tions, with their acquiescence every statute might be abrogated 
by neglect, and without their consent no reform or improvement 
could be attempted. 

Such a body was incapable of fulfilling — was even incapable of 
not violating — its public trust. Raised, in general, by accident 
to their situation, the Heads, as a body, had neither the lofty 
motives, nor the comprehensive views, which could enable them 
adequately to discharge their arduous duty to the university. 
They were irresponsible for their inability or bad faith, — for 
what they did or for what they did not perform ; while public 
opinion was long too feeble to control so numerous a body, and 
too unenlightened to take cognisance of their unobtrusive usurpa- 
tions. At the same time, their interests were placed in strono* 
and direct hostility to their obligations. — Personally they were 
interested in allowing no body in the university to transcend the 
level of their own mediocrity ; and a body of able and efficient 
Professors would have at once mortified their self-importance, and 
occasioned their inevitable degradation from the unnatural emi- 
nence to which accident had raised them. Conceive the Oxford 



444 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.; 

Heads predominating over a senate of Professors like those of 
Goettingen or Berlin ! — Add to this, that the efficiency of the 
public instructors would have again occasioned a concourse of 
students far beyond the means of accommodation afforded by the 
Colleges ; and either the Halls must be revived, and the authority 
of the Heads divided, or the principle of domestic superintendence 
must be relaxed, on which, however, their whole influence depended. 
— As representatives of the collegial interest, they were also natu- 
rally hostile to the system of public instruction. If the standard 
of professorial competence were high in the Faculty of Arts, the 
standard of tutorial competence could never be reduced to the 
average capacity of the fellows ; whose monopoly, even of subsidiary 
education would thus be frustrated in the colleges. And if the 
professorial system remained effective in the Higher Faculties, it 
would be impossible to supersede it in the lower department of the 
lowest, in which alone the tutorial discipline could supply its place ; 
and the attempt of the Colleges to raise their education from a 
subsidiary to a principal in the university, would thus be baffled. 
— Again, if the University remained effective, and residence in all 
the faculties enforced, the colleges would be filled by a crowd of 
Graduates, not only emancipated from tutorial discipline, but 
rivals even of the fellows in the office of tutor ; while, at the same 
time, the restoration of the Halls could, in these circumstances, 
hardly be evaded. — All these inconveniences and dangers would 
however be obviated, and profitably obviated, if standing on the 
college books were allowed to count for statutory residence in the 
university. By this expedient, not only could the professor- 
ships in all the faculties be converted into sinecures, — the Col- 
leges filled exclusively by students paying tutors' fees to the 
fellows, — and the academical population reduced to the accommo- 
dation furnished by the existing houses ; but (what we have failed 
formerly to notice) a revenue of indefinite amount might be realised 
to the Colleges, by taxing standing on their books with the dues 
exigible from actual residence.* 

* The last Oxford Calendar is before us. The number of uuder-graduates 
is not given, and we have not patience to count them ; but we shall be con- 
siderably above the mark in estimating them at 1548, i. e. the number given 
by the matriculations for the year multiplied by 4. The whole members on 
the books amount to 5258. Deducting the former from the latter, there 
remain of members not astricted to residence, 3710. Averaging the Battel 
dues paid by each at thirty shillings, there results an annual income from 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 445 

Through the agency of its Heads, the collegial interest accom- 
plished its usurpation. Public education in the Four Faculties 
was reduced to private instruction in the lower department of the 
lowest ; and this, again, brought down to the individual incapacity 
of every Fellow-Tutor. — The following we state in supplement of 
our more general exposition. 

In the first place, this was effected by converting the professo- 
rial system of instruction, through which, as its necessary mean, 
the University legally accomplishes the ends prescribed to it by 
law, into an unimportant accident in the academical constitution. 

To this end, the professorial system was mutilated. — Public 
instruction was more particularly obnoxious to the collegial inte- 
rest in the Faculty of Arts ; and four chairs, established by the 
university in that Faculty, were, without the consent of the 
university asked or obtained, abolished by the Hebdomadal Meet- 
ing. The salaries of the Professorships of Grammar, Rhetoric, 
Logic, and Metaphysic, thus illegally suppressed, were paid by 
the Proctors out of certain statutory exactions ; and we shall state 
our reasons for suspecting that their acquiescence in this and 
other similar acts, was purchased by their colleagues, the Heads 
of Houses, allowing these functionaries to appropriate the salaries 
to themselves. The Proctors hung more loosely on the collegial 
interest than the other members of the Hebdomadal Meeting;* 
and as their advantage was less immediately involved in the sup- 
pression of the professorial system, it required, we may suppose, 
some positive inducement to secure their thorough-going subser- 

this source alone of L.5565, (and it is much more,) to be distributed among 
the houses, for the improvement of headships, fellowships, the purchase of 
livings, &c. 

* Before the Caroline statute of 1628, the Proctors were elected by, and 
out of, the whole body of full graduates in all the faculties of the university. 
The office was an object of the highest ambition ; men only of some mark 
and talent had any chance of obtaining it ; and its duties were paid, not by 
money, but distinction. By this statute all was changed ; and another mean 
of accomplishing its usurpation bestowed on the collegial interest. The elec- 
tion was given, in a certain rotation, to one of the Colleges, (the Halls being 
excluded ;) and in the elective college, eligibility was confined to the masters, 
and the masters between four and ten years' standing, ^he office was now 
filled only by persons more or less attached to the collegial interest, and 
these appointed in a great measure by accident ; while, as it afforded no 
honour, its labours must be remunerated by emolument, And let the 
Proctors be adequately paid, only let this be done in an open and legal 
manner. 



446 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES -OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

vience to the crooked policy of the Heads. We know too, that 
the emolument of their office, allowed by law, is just three pounds 
six shillings, sterling money; while we also know, that its emolu- 
ment, though not revealed in the calendar, is, in reality, sufficient 
to call up a wealthy incumbent from the country to the perform- 
ance of its irksome duties. We have also the analogy of another 
chair which was certainly sequestrated for their profit. The 
history of this job is edifying. The Professorship of Moral Philo- 
sophy was, in 1621, endowed by Dr Thomas White, under strict 
conditions for securing the efficiency of the chair ; these were 
ratified by Convocation, and declared by law to be inviolable. 
And " that individuals every way competent (viros undequaque 
pares) to this readership may always be appointed," he intrusted 
(fond man !) the election to these members of the (future) Heb- 
domadal Meeting, the Vice-Chancellor, the Dean of Christ- 
Church, the Presidents of Magdalen and St John's, and the 
Proctors (under the old system.) What happened ? The chair 
was converted into a sinecure; and one or other of the Proc- 
tors, by the very act of self-appointment, approved undequaque 
par to inculcate Morality by example, installed professor on 
every quinquennial vacancy.* What arrangement was made 
about the salary (L.100), we know not. — Five out of eleven 
odious chairs were thus disposed of; and the co-operation of the 
Proctors secured. 

To the same end, the remnant of the professorial system, not 
abolished, was paralysed. In our former paper, we showed how 
this system, as constituted by the Laudian statutes, though easily 
capable of high improvement, was extremely defective ; partly 
from the incompetency or ill intention of the elective bodies ; 
partly from the temporary nature of several of the chairs ; but. 

* This continued from 1673 till 1829. The patriotic exertions of the pre- 
sent Lord Chancellor, in the exposure of similar abuses in other public semi- 
naries, had alarmed the Heads, and probably disposed them to listen to the 
suggestions of the more liberal members of their body. The job, too flagrant 
to escape notice or admit of justification, was discontinued. The Rev. Mr 
Mills, Fellow of Magdalen, was nominated Professor ; and he has honour- 
ably signalized tlfli reform, by continuing to deliver a course of lectures, 
which, we understand, have been (for Oxford) numerously attended. His 
introductory lecture, On the Theory of Monti Obligation, which is pub- 
lished, shows with what ability he could discharge its important duties, were 
the chair restored to that place in the academical system which it has a right 
to hold. 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 447 

above all, from the non-identity which subsisted between the 
interest of the Professor and his duty. The Heads, though sworn 
to the scholastic improvement of the university, not only proposed 
no remedy for these defects ; they positively withheld the cor- 
rectives they were bound to apply ; and even did all that in 
them lay to enhance the evil. Through collegial influence, per- 
sons wholly incompetent were nominated Professors ; and every 
provision, by which the University anxiously attempted to insure 
the diligence of the public teacher, was, by the academical exe- 
cutive, sedulously frustrated. The Professors, now also most 
exclusively members of the collegial interest, were allowed to 
convert their chairs into sinecures; or to teach, if they ultro- 
neously lectured, what, when, where, how, how long, to whom, 
and under what conditions, they chose. The consummation 
devoutly wished was soon realized. The shreds of the profes- 
sorial system are now little more than curious vestiges of anti- 
quity ; and the one essential mean of education in the legal 
system of Oxford, as in the practice of all other universities, is of 
no more necessity, in the actual system, than if it were not, and 
had never been. 

As to the lectures of the graduates at large, these were soon 
so entirely quashed, that the right of lecturing itself — nay, the 
very meaning of the terms Regent and Non- Regent, was at last 
wholly forgotten in the English Universities.* 

* So long ago as the commencement of the last century, Serjeant Miller, 
the antagonist of Bentley, and who is praised by Dr Monk for his profound 
knowledge of academical affairs, once and again, in his Account of the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, (pp. 21, 80,) assures us, that the terms "Regent" and 
" Non-Regent" were then not understood; and the same ignorance at the 
present day is admitted by the recent historian of that University, Mr Dyer. 
(Privileges, &c. ii. p. cxxiii.) Before our late article appeared, we do not 
believe there was a member of either English University who could have 
explained the principle of this distinction, on which, however, the consti- 
tution of these academical corporations fundamentally rests; or who was 
aware that every full graduate possesses, in virtue of his degree, the right of 
lecturing on any subject of his faculty in the public schools of the Univer- 
sity. — On this right, it may be proper to add a few words in addition to what 
we formerly stated. It is certain, that, before the Laudian Corpus, gradua- 
tion both conferred the right, and imposed the obligation, of public teaching ; 
the one for ever, the other during a certain time. — In regard to the former, 
nothing was altered by this code. The form of a Bachelor's degree is, in 
fact, to this moment, that of a license to lecture on certain books within 
his faculty ; and that of a Master's and Doctors, a license to commence 



448 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-OXFORD— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

This grand object of their policy, the Hebdomadal Meeting 
was constrained to carry through, without even the pretext of 
law. There is neither statute nor dispensation to allege for the 
conduct of the Heads, or the conduct of the Professors. 

In the second place, the obligation of attendance on the public 
lectures was no longer enforced. This violation of the statutes 
was correlative of the last ; but in the present instance, it would 
appear, that the illegality has been committed under the sem- 
blance of a legal act. 

In our former article, as then uncertain touching the point of 
actual practice, we could only in general demonstrate, that no 
universal dispensation of attendance on the public lectures is con- 
ceded by statute, and that none such, therefore, could legally be 
passed either by Congregation or Convocation. We have since 
ascertained, that a dispensation is pretended for this non-obser- 
vance as obtained from Congregation, under the dispensing power 
conceded to that house, " Pro minus diligenti publicorum Lecto- 
rum auditione;" at least, such a dispensation is passed for all 
candidates, while no other relative to the observance in question 
is conceded. It will here be proper to prove more particularly, 
that the dispensation, in the present instance, actually accorded, 
and the dispensation necessarily required, have no mutual propor- 
tion. The dispensation required, in order to cover the violation, 
is one : — 1°, for an absolute non-attendance ; 2°, without the 
excuse of an unavoidable impediment ; and, 3°, to all candidates 
indifferently. The dispensation which Congregation can concede — 
the dispensation therefore actually conceded, is, 1°, not granted 
for non-attendance absolutely, but only for the negation of its 
highest quality — a not altogether diligent attendance ; 2°, not 
granted without just reason shown ; and, 3°, consequently not 
granted to all, but only to certain individuals. It must be remem- 
bered, that every candidate for graduation is unconditionally 

(incipere — hence Occam's title of Venerabilis Inceptor,) all those solemn acts 
of teaching, disputation, &c, which belong to, and are required of, a perfect 
graduate, (T. ix.) — In regard to the latter, the obligation of public teaching 
is declared not repealed, (T. iv. § 1 ;) and if the obligation could still be 
enforced, a majore, the right could still be exercised. It is only permitted 
to Congregation to dispense with the u necessary regency" if they, on the 
one hand, for a reasonable cause, think Jit, and if the inceptor, on the other, 
choose to pay for this indulgence. (T. ix. S. iv. § 2. 21.) In point of fact, 
this right of lecturing continued to be exercised by the graduates for a con- 
siderable time after the ratification of the Corpus Statutorum. 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 449 

bound by statute to have " diligently heard (diligenter audivisse) 
the public lectures " relative to his degree : whilst the fulfilment 
of this condition, in the same terms, is sworn to in the oath he 
makes to the senior Proctor ; and forms part of his supplication 
for a grace to the House of Congregation. But as no one could 
strictly aver that he had " diligently heard " these lectures who 
was absent from their delivery, however seldom, (and the framers 
of the statutes were as rigid in their notions of perjury as the 
administrators have subsequently been lax,) while at the same 
time it would have been unjust to deprive a candidate of his 
degree for every slight and unavoidable non-performance of this 
condition ; it was therefore thought equitable and expedient to 
qualify the oath to the extent of allowing, " occasionally," to 
" certain persons," for the reason of a "just hinderance" a dis- 
pensation " for the non-fulfilment of every particular, in the mode 
and form required by statute," and in special " for the not com- 
pletely regular (minus diligenti) attendance on the public readers." 
The words are : — " Cum justa quandoque impedimenta inter veni- 
ant, quo minus ea omnia, quae ad Gradus et alia exercitia Univer- 
sitatis requiruntur, modo et forma per Statuta requisitis, rite 
peragantur ; consuevit Congregatio Regentium in hujusmodi 
causis cum perscnis aliquibus in materia dispensabili aliquoties 
gratiose dispensare." (Corp. Stat. T. ix. S. 4, § 1, Add. p. 135.) 
— After this preamble, and governed by it, there follows the list 
of " Dispensable Matters," permitted to Congregation, of which 
the one in question, and already quoted, is the fourth. 

It is a general rule that all statutes and oaths are to be inter- 
preted "ad animum imponentis ;" and the Oxford legislators 
expressly declare, that the academical statutes and oaths are vio- 
lated if interpreted or taken in a sense different from that in 
which they were intended by them, and if against the interests 
of education, (Epinomis.) Now, that it was intended by Convo- 
cation to convey to Congregation, by this clause, a general power 
of absolving all candidates from the performance of the one para- 
mount condition of their degree, no honest man in his senses will 
venture to maintain. The supposition involves every imaginable 
absurdity. It is contrary to the plain meaning of the clause, 
considered either in itself or in reference to the obligation which 
it modifies ; and contrary to its meaning, as shown by the prac- 
tice of the University, at the period of its ratification, and long 
subsequent. It would stultify the whole purport of the academi- 

2f 



450 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.-(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

cal laws, — make the University commit suicide, (for the University 
exists only through its public education,) — and suicide without a 
motive. It would suppose a statute ratified only to be repealed ; 
and a dispensation intended to be co-extensive with a law. It 
would make the legislative House of Convocation to concede to 
the inferior House of Congregation, a power of dispensing with a 
performance infinitely more important than the most important of 
those in which it expressly prohibits this indulgence to itself; and 
all this, too, by a clause of six words, shuffled in among a score of 
other dispensations too insignificant for mention. 

The non-attendance of candidates on the public courses, as per- 
mitted by the Heads, is thus illegal; and perjury is the price that 
must be paid by all for a degree. 

In the third place, the residence in the University required by sta- 
tute to qualify for all degrees above Bachelor of Arts was not enforced. 
This violation is also a corollary of the two former ; and here like- 
wise, but without success, it is attempted to evade the illegality. 

The House of Convocation, i. e., the graduates, regent and non- 
regent, of the University, though fully possessing the powers of 
legislation, found it necessary to limit their own capacity of sus- 
pending, in particular cases, the ordinary application of their 
statutes. If such a dispensing power were not strictly limited, 
the consequences are manifest. The project of an academical 
law, as a matter of general interest, solemnly announced, obtains 
a grave deliberation, with a full attendance both of the advocates 
and opponents of the measure ; and it is passed under the con- 
sciousness that it goes forth to the world to be canvassed at the 
bar of public opinion, if not to be reviewed by a higher positive 
tribunal. The risk, therefore, is comparatively small, that a 
statute will be ratified, glaringly contrary either to the aggregate 
interests of those who constitute the University, or to the public 
ends which the University, as an instrument privileged for the 
sake of the community, necessarily proposes to accomplish. All 
is different with a dispensation. Here the matter, as private and 
particular, and without any previous announcement, attracts, in all 
likelihood, only those in favour of its concession ; is treated lightly, 
as exciting no attention ; or passed, as never to be known, or, if 
known, only to be forgot. The experience also of past abuses, 
had taught the academical legislators to limit strictly the license 
of dispensation permitted to themselves : — " Quia ex nimia dis- 
pensandi licentia grave incommodum Universitati antehac obor- 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 451 

turn est (nee aliter fieri potuit ; ) statuit et decrevit Universitas, 
ne, in posterum, dispensations ullatenus proponantur in casibus 
sequentibus." (Corp. Stat. T. x. S. 2, § 5.) A list of matters is 
then given (described in our last paper, p. 428 sq.) with which Con- 
vocation cannot dispense ; the most important of which are, how- 
ever, in actual practice violated without a, dispensation. It is suf- 
ficient here to notice, that the matters declared indispensable, 
(those particulars, namely, in which this indulgence had formerly 
been abused,) to say nothing of the others declared dispensable, 
are the merest trifles compared with that under discussion. Un- 
der the heads, both of Dispensable' and of Indispensable Matter, 
a general power is indeed cautiously left to the Chancellor, of 
allowing the Hebdomadal Meeting to propose a dispensation; but 
this only " from some necessary and very urgent cause (ex neces- 
saria et perurgente aliqua causa), and moreover under the former 
head, only " in cases which are not repugnant to academical dis- 
cipline, (qui discipline Academical non repugnant)." The legisla- 
ture did not foresee that the very precautions thus anxiously 
adopted, to prevent the abuse of dispensation in time to come, 
without altogether surrendering its conveniencies, were soon to be 
employed as the especial means of carrying this abuse to an 
extent, compared with ivhich all former abuses were as nothing. 
They did not foresee that the Chancellor was soon to become a 
passive instrument in the hands of the Hebdomadal Meeting ; that 
these appointed guardians of the law were soon themselves to 
become its betrayers ; that the Collegial bodies were soon to 
cherish interests at variance with those of the University ; that 
nearly the whole resident graduates were soon to be exclusively 
of that interest, and soon, therefore, to constitute, almost alone, 
the ordinary meetings of the two Houses ; and that in these ordi- 
nary meetings, under the illegal covert of Dispensations, were all 
the fundamental Statutes of the University to be soon absolutely 
annulled, in pursuance of the private policy of the Colleges. 

Under the extraordinary dispensing power thus cautiously left 
to the Chancellor, Heads, and Convocation, a legal remission of 
the residence required by statute is now attempted ; but in vain. 

From his situation, the Chancellor is only the organ of the 
Collegial Heads. His acts are therefore to be considered as 
theirs. Chancellor's Letters are applied for and furnished, ready 
made, by the University Registrar, to all proceeding to degrees 
above Bachelor of Arts, permitting the Hebdomadal Meeting to 



452 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

propose in Convocation a dispensation in their favour for the resi- 
dence required by statute. The dispensation is proposed, and, as 
a matter of routine, conceded by the members of the collegial 
interest met in an ordinary Convocation. — But is this legal ? Is 
this what was intended by the legislature ? Manifestly not, The 
contingency in the eye of law, for which it permits a dispensation, 
and the case for which, under this permission, a dispensation 
is actually obtained, are not only different, but contrary. We 
shall not stop to argue that the dispensation obtained is illegal, 
because tc repugnant to academical discipline ;" for it is manifestly, 
as far as it goes, the very negation of academical discipline alto- 
gether. We shall take it upon the lowest ground. — A dispensation 
of its very nature is relative to particular cases ; and in allowing 
it to Convocation, the law contemplated a particular emergency 
arising from " some necessary and very urgent cause" not to be 
anticipated by statute, and for which, therefore, it provides a sudden 
and extraordinary remedy. But who will pretend that a perpetual 
remission of attendance to all could be comprehended under this 
category ? Such a dispensation is universal, and therefore tanta- 
mount to a negation of the law. It thus violates the very notion 

of a dispensation Then, it does not come under the conditions 

by which all dispensations, thus competent to Convocation, are 
governed. It is neither " necessary" nor " very urgent" JNot, 
certainly, at the commencement of the practice ; for how, on any 
day, week, month, or year, could there have arisen a necessity, an 
urgency, for abolishing the term of residence quietly tolerated 
during five centuries, so imperative and sudden, that the matter 
could not be delayed (if a short delay were unavoidable) until 
brought into Convocation, and approved or rejected as a general 
measure? But if the " cause" of dispensation were, in this case, 
so " necessary " and so " very urgent," at first, that it could not 
brook the delay even of a week or month, how has this necessity 
and urgency been protracted for above a century ? The present 
is not one of those particular and unimportant cases, with which, 
it might be said, that the statutes should not be incumbered, and 
which are therefore left to be quietly dealt with by dispensation. 
The case in question is of universal application, and of paramount 
importance ; one, of all others, which it was the appointed duty 
of the Heads to have submitted without delay to the academical 
legislature, as the project of a law to be by Convocation rejected 
or approved. (Tit. xiii.) 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 453 

The dispensation of residence is thus palpably illegal. 
III. In evidence of the third proposition, we showed, as already 
proved, — that the present academical system is illegal, being one 
universal violation of another system, exclusively established by 
the statutes of the University ; — that this illegal system is for 
the private behoof of the Colleges.; — that this system, profitable 
to the Colleges, was intruded into the University by their Heads, 
who for this end violated, or permitted to be violated, the whole 
fundamental statutes they were appointed to protect ; — that this 
conflict between a legal system suspended in fact, and an actual 
system non-existent in law, has been maintained solely by the 
Heads, who, while possessing the initiative of all statutes, have, 
however, hitherto declined submitting the actual system to Con- 
vocation, in order to obtain for it a legal authorization : — But all 
members of the University make oath to the faithful observance 
of the academical statutes ; and the Heads, specially sworn to see 
that these are by all faithfully observed, are by statute branded 
as pre-eminently guilty of " broken trust and perjury," if even 
" by their negligence, any [unrepealed] statute whatever is 
allowed to fall into disuse:" — Consequently, the Heads have, 
for themselves, voluntarily incurred the crime of " broken trust 
and perjury," in a degree infinitely higher than was ever anti- 
cipated as possible by the legislature ; and, for others, have, for 
their interested purposes, necessitated the violation of their oaths 
by all members of the University.* 

Now, taking it for granted that, without a motive, no body of 
magistrates would live, and make others live, in a systematic 
disregard of law, — that no body of moral censors would exhibit 
the spectacle of their own betrayal of a great public trust, — and 
that no body of religious guardians would hazard their own sal- 
vation, and the salvation of those confided to their care:f — on 
this ground we showed, that while every motive was manifestly 
against, no motive could possibly be assigned for, the conduct 



* u 



He is guilty of perjury, who promiseth upon oath, what he is not 
morally and reasonably certain he shall be able to perform."— (Tillotson, 
Works, vol. i. p. 248. Sermon on the Lawfulness and Obligation of Oaths.) 

t " Ille qui hominem provocat ad jurationem, et scit eum falsum juratu- 
rum esse, vicit homicidam : quia homicida corpus occisurus est, ille animam, 
immo duas animas ; et ejus animam quern jurare provocavit, et suam. n — 
(Augustinus in Decollat. S. Joannis Baptistae et hob. 22. quaest. 5. Ille 
qui.) 



454 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.-(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

of the Heads, in so long exclusively maintaining their intrusive 
system, and never asking for it a legal sanction ; except their 
consciousness, that it was too bad to hope for the solemn approval 
of a House of Convocation, albeit composed of 'members of the 
collegial interest, and too profitable not to be continued at every 
sacrifice. 

Rather indeed, we may now add, than hazard the continuance 
of this profitable system, by allowing its merits to be canvassed 
even by a body interested in its support, the Heads have vio- 
lated not only their moral and religious obligations to the Uni- 
versity and country, but, in a particular manner, their duty 
to the Church of England. By law, Oxford is not merely an 
establishment for the benefit of the English nation; it is an 
establishment for the benefit of those only in community with 
the English Church. But the Heads well knew that the man 
will subscribe thirty-nine articles which he cannot believe, who 
swears to do and to have clone a hundred articles which he can- 
not, or does not, perform ? * In this respect, private usurpation 
was for once more (perversely) liberal than public law. Under 
the illegal system, Oxford has ceased to be the seminary of a 
particular sect ; its governors impartially excluding all religion- 
ists or none. Nor is this all. The natural tendency of the 
academical ordeal was to sear the conscience of the patient to 
every pious scruple ;f and the example of " the accursed thing" 
thus committed and enforced by ei the Priests in the high places," 
extended its pernicious influence, from the Universities, through- 
out the land. England became the country in Europe proverbial 
for a disregard of oaths ; J and the English Church, in particular, 

* Nay, the oath for observance of the Statutes is, by the academical legis- 
lature, held a matter of far more serious obligation than the subscription of 
the Thirty- nine Articles. For by Statute (T. II. § 3,) the intrant is not 
allowed to take the oath until he reach the age of sixteen ; whereas the sub- 
scription is lightly required even of boys matriculating at the tender age of 
twelve. [Of this more again.] 

t " Dico vobis non jurare omnino ; ne scilicet jurando ad facilitatem 
jurandi veniatur, de facilitate ad consuetudinem, de consuetudine ad perju- 
rium decidatur." — (Augustinus De Mendacio.) " In Novo Testamento 
dictum est, Ne omnino juremus : quod mini quidem propterea dictum esse 
videtur, non quia jurare peccatum est, sed quia pejerare immane peccatum 
est, a quo longe nos esse voluit, qui omnino ne juremus commovit." — (Idem 
in Epist. ad Publicolam, et hab. 22. qu. 1. in novo.) 

% [See the reflections of Bishops Sanderson and Berkeley on this national 
opprobium quoted in the seventh article of this series.] 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 455 

was abandoned, as a peculiar prey, to the cupidity of men allured 
by its endowments, and educated to a contempt of all religious 
tests. * As Butler has it : — 

" They swore so many lies before, 
That now, without remorse, 
They take ail oaths that can be made, 
As only things of course." f 

No one will doubt the profound anxiety of the Heads to avert 
these lamentable consequences, and to withdraw themselves from 
a responsibility so appalling. We may therefore estimate at once 
the intensity of their attachment to the illegal system, as a pri- 
vate source of emolument and power, and the strength of their 
conviction of its utter worthlessness, as a public instrument for 
accomplishing the purposes of an University. Not only will the 
system, when examined, be found absurd ; it is already admitted 
to be so : and all attempt at an apology by any individual, by any 
subordinate, member of the collegial interest, would be necessarily 
vain, while we can oppose to it " the deep damnation " reluctantly 
pronounced on their own act and deed by so many generations of 
the College Heads themselves. 

Tt thus appears, that the downfall of the University has been 
the result, and the necessary result, of subjecting it to an influence 
jealous of its utility, and, though incompetent to its functions, 
ambitious to usurp its place. The College Heads have been, and 
will always be, the bane of the University, so long as they are 
suffered to retain the power of paralysing its efficiency : at least, 
if a radical reconstruction of the whole collegial system do not 
identify the interests of the public and of the private corporations, 
and infuse into the common governors of both a higher spirit and 
a more general intelligence. We regret that our charges against 
the Heads have been so heavy ; and would repeat, that our stric- 
tures have been applied to them not as individuals, but exclusively 
in their corporate capacity. We are even disposed altogether to 
exempt the recent members of this body from a reproach more 

* [This melancholy consequence came out more obtrusively, after the obser- 
vation in the text was written. See the same article.] 

f Another annoying consequence of the illegal state of the English Uni- 
versities may be mentioned. The Heads either durst not, under present 
circumstances, attempt, or would be inevitably baffled in attempting, to resist 
the communication to other seminaries of those academical privileges which 
they themselves have so disgracefully abused. The truth of this observation 
will probably soon be manifested by the event. [And has been.] 



456 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.-(SUPPLEMENTAL-) 

serious than that of ignorance as to the nature and extent of their 
duty to the University ; * while we freely acknowledge that they 
have inadequately felt the want, and partially commenced the 
work, of reformation, which we trust they may long live to see 
completed. We should be sorry indeed not to believe, that, among 
the present heads, there are individuals fully aware that Oxford 
is not what it ought to be, and prepared cordially to co-operate 
in restoring the University to its utility and rights. But it is not 
in the power of individuals to persuade a body of men in opposi- 
tion to their interests : and even if the whole actual members of 
the Hebdomadal Meeting were satisfied of the dishonest character 
of the policy hitherto pursued, and personally anxious to reverse 
it ; we can easily conceive that they might find it invidious to take 
upon themselves to condemn so deeply so many generations of 
their predecessors, and a matter of delicacy to surrender, on 
behalf of the collegial interest, but in opposition to its wishes, the 
valuable monopoly it has so long been permitted without molesta- 
tion to enjoy. In this conflict of delicacy, interest, and duty, the 
Heads themselves ought to desire, — ought to invoke, the interpo- 
sition of a higher authority. A Royal or Parliamentary Visita- 
tion is the easy and appropriate mode of solving the difficulty ; — 
a difficulty which, in fact, only arose from the intermission, for 
above the last century and a half, of that corrective, which, since 
the subjection of the University to the Colleges, remained the only 
remedy for abuses, and abuses determined by that subjection itself. 
Previous to that event, though the Crown occasionally interposed 
to the same salutary end, still the University possessed within 
itself the ordinary means of reform ; Convocation frequently 
appointing delegates to inquire into abuses, and to take counsel 
for the welfare and melioration of the establishment. But by 
bestowing on a private body, like the Heads, the exclusive guar- 
dianship of the statutes, and the initiative of every legal measure, 
Convocation was deprived of the power of active interference, and 
condemned to be the passive spectator of all that the want of wis- 
dom, all that the self-seeking of the academical executive might 
do, or leave undone. 

* Any degree of such ignorance in the present Heads we can imagine pos- 
sible, after that recently shown by the most intelligent individuals in Oxford, 
of the relatiou subsisting between the public and the private corporations. 
As we noticed in our last paper, the parasitic Fungus is there mistaken for 
the Oak; the Colleges are viewed as constituting the Uniuctsit?/. 



WHENCE A REFORMATION ? 457 

Through the influence, and for the personal aggrandisement of 
an ambitious statesman, the Crown delivered over the reluctant 
University, bound hand and foot, into the custody of a private and 
irresponsible body, actuated by peculiar and counter interests ; 
and, to consummate the absurdity, it never afterwards interfered, 
as heretofore, to alleviate the disastrous consequences of this 
its own imprudent act. And had the Heads met, had they 
expected to meet, the occasional check of a disinterested and 
wiser body, they would probably never have even thought of 
attempting the collegial monopoly of education which they have 
succeeded in establishing on the ruin of all the faculties of the 
University. This neglect was unfair, even to the Heads them- 
selves, who were thus exposed to a temptation, which, as a body, 
it was not in their nature to resist. " Ovem lupo commisisti." 
But it is not the wolf, who acts only after kind, it is they who 
confide the flock to his charge, who are bound to answer for the 
sheep. To the administrators of the State, rather than to the 
administrators of the University, are thus primarily to be attri- 
buted the corruptions of Oxford. To them, likewise, must we 
look for their removal. The Crown is, in fact, bound, in justice 
to the nation, to restore the University against the consequences 
of its own imprudence and neglect. And as it ought, so it is 
alone able. To expect, in opposition to all principle and all expe- 
rience, that a body, like the Heads, — that a body even like the 
present House of Convocation, — either could conceive the plan of 
an adequate improvement, or would will its execution, is the very 
climax of folly. It is from the State only, and the Crown in par- 
ticular, that we can reasonably hope for an academical reformation 
worthy of the name. 

" Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantnm." 

But with a patriot King, a reforming Ministry, and a reformed 
Parliament, we are confident that our expectations will not be 
vain. A general scholastic reform will be, in fact, one of the 
greatest blessings of the political renovation, and, perhaps, the 
surest test of its value. 

And on this great subject, could we presume personally to 
address his Majesty, as supreme Visitor of the Universities, we 
should humbly repeat to William the Fourth, in the present, the 
counsel which Locke, in the last great crisis of the constitution, 
solemnly tendered to William the Third : — " Sire, you have made 
a most glorious and ha.ppy Revolution; but the good effects of 



458 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

it will soon be lost, if no care is taken to regulate the Uni- 
versities" * 

On the other hand, were we to address the Senators of Eng- 
land, as the reformers of all abuses both in church and state ; 
though it needs, certainly, no wizard to expose the folly of wait- 
ing for our reformation of the English Universities from the very 
parties interested in their corruption ; it would be impossible to 
do so in weightier or more appropriate words, than those in which 
Agrippa — " the wise Cornelius" — exhorts the Senators of Cologne, 
to take the work of reforming the venerable University of that 
city exclusively into their own hands : — " Dicetis forte, quis nos- 
trum ista faciet, si ipsi scholarum Rectores et Presides id non 
faciunt? — Certe si illis permittitis reformationis hujus negotium, 
in eodem semper luto hserebitis ; cum, unusquisque illorum talem 
gestiat formare Academiam, in qua ipse maxime in pretio sit 
futurus, ut hactenus asinus inter asinos, porcus inter porcos. 
Vestra est Universitas ; vestri in ilia praecipue erudiuntur filii ; 
vestrum negotium agitur. Vestrum ergo est omnia recte ordinare, 
prudenter statuere, sapienter disponere, sancte reformare, ut 
vestrse civitatis honor et utilitas suadent ; nisi forte vultis filiis 
vestris ignavos, potius, quam eruditos, praeesse Magistros, atque 
in civitatem vestram competat, quod olim in Ephesios ; — ' Nemo 
apud nos fit frugi ; si quis extiterit, in alio loco et apud alios fit 
ille. y Quod si filios vestros, quos Reipublicae vestrae profuturos 
genuistis, bonarum literarum gratia ad externas urbes et Univer- 
sitates peregre mittitis erudiendos, cur in vestra urbe illos his 
studiis fraudatis? Cur artes et literas non recipitis peregrinas, 
qui filios vestros illarum gratia emittitis ad peregrinos ? - - - 
Quod si nunc prisci illi urbis vestrse Senatores sepulchris suis 
exirent, quid putatis illos dicturos, quod tarn celebrem olim Uni- 
versitatem vestram, magnis sumptions, laboribus et precibus ab 
ipsis huic urbi comparatam, vos taliter cum obtenebrari patimim, 
turn funditus extingui sustineatis ? Nemo certe negare potest, 

* This anecdote is told by Serjeant Miller, in his Account of the University 
of Cambridge, published in 1717, (p. 188.) It is unknown, so far as we 
recollect, to all the biographers of Locke. But William probably thought, 
like Dr Parr, w that the English Universities stood in need of a thorough 
reformation ; only, as seminaries of the church, it was [selfishly] the wisest 
thing for [King and] Parliament to let them alone, and not raise a nest of 
hornets about their ears." — [The Universities are not, however, now so 
strong ; public opinion is not now so weak ; whilst the nation at length 
seems roused from its apathy, urgent and earnest for a reform.] 



WHENCE A REFORMATION ?- ASSERTORY PAMPHLET. 459 

urbem vestram civesque vestros omnibus Germanise civitatibus 
rerum atque morum magnificentia anteponendam, si unus ille 
bonarum literarum splendor vobis non deesset. Polletis enim 
omnibus fortunae bonis et divitiis, nullius, ad vitse et magnificentia? 
usum egetis ; sed ha3c omnia apud vos mortua sunt, et velut in 
pariete picta ; quoniam quibus hsec vivificari et animari debeant, 
anima caretis, hoc est, bonis Uteris non polletis, in quibus solis 
honor, dignitas, et immortalis in longaevam posteritatem gloria 
continetur." * 

The preceding statement will enable us to make brief work 
with the Assertor. — His whole argument turns on two cardinal 
propositions : the one of which, as maintained by us, he refutes ; 
the other, as admitted by us, he assumes. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, we maintain, as the very foundation of our case, the con- 
verse of the proposition he refutes as ours ; and our case itself 
is the formal refutation of the very proposition he assumes as 
conceded. 

The proposition professedly refuted is, — That the legitimate 
constitution of the University of Oxford was finally and exclusively 
determined by the Laudian Code, and that all change in that con- 
stitution, by subsequent statute, is illegal. 

The proposition assumed is, — That the present academical 
system, though different from that established by the Laudian 
Code, is, however, ratified by subsequent statute. 

(This refutation and assumption, taken together, imply the 
conclusion, — That the present system is legal.) 

The former proposition, as we said, is not ours ; we not only 
never conceiving that so extravagant an absurdity could be main- 
tained, but expressly stating or notoriously assuming the reverse 
in almost every page, nay establishing it even as the principal 
basis of our argument. If this proposition were true, our whole 
demonstration of the interested policy of the Heads would have 
been impossible. How could we have shown, that the changes 
introduced by them were only for the advantage of themselves 
and of the collegial interest in general, unless we had been able 
to show, that there existed in the University, a capacity of legal 
change, and that the preference of illegal change by the Heads, 
argued that their novelties were such as, they themselves were 
satisfied, did not deserve the countenance of Convocation, that is, 

* Epistolarum L. vii. ep. 26. Opera, II. p. 1042. 



460 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.- (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

of the body legislating for the utility and honour of the Univer- 
sity? If all change had been illegal, and, at the same time, 
change (as must be granted) unavoidable and expedient ; the con- 
duct of the Heads would have found an ample cloak in the folly, — 
in the impossibility of the law. — Yet the Venerable and Veraci- 
ous Member coolly " asserts," that this, as the position which we 
maintain, is the position which he writes his pamphlet to refute. 
With an effrontery, indeed, ludicrous from its extravagance, he 
even exults over our " luckless admission," — " that Convocation 
possesses the right of rescinding old, and of ratifying new, laws," 
(p. 25) ; and (on the hypothesis, always, that we, like himself, 
had an intention of deceiving), actually charges it as " one of our 
greatest blunders" — a blunder betraying a total want of " common 
sense" — " to have referred to the Appendix and Addenda to the 
Statute-book," (p. 86,) i. e. to the work we reviewed-, to the docu- 
ments on which our argument was immediately and principally 
founded ! * 

In regard to the latter proposition, it is quite true that if the 
former academical system had been repealed, and the present 
ratified by Convocation, the actual order of things in Oxford is 
legal, and the Heads stand guiltless in the sight of God and 
man. But, as this is just the matter in question, and as instead 

* It may amuse our readers to hear how our ingenuous disputant lavs out 
his pamphlet, alias, his refutation of " the Medish immutability of the Lau- 
dian digest." This immutability he refutes by arguing : — 

" From the general principles of jurisprudence, as they relate to the muta- 
bility of human laws. (Sect. II.) — From the particular principles of muni- 
cipal incorporation, as they relate to the making of by-laws. (Sect. III.) — 
From the express words of the Corpus Statutorum. (Sect. IV.) — From im- 
memorial usage, that is, the constant practice of the University from 1234 to 
1831. (Sect. V.) — From the principle of adaptation upon which the statutes 
of 1636 were compiled and digested. (Sect. VI .) — From Archbishop Laud's 
own declarations in respect of those statutes. (Sect. VII.)— From his 
instructions to Dr Frewin, in 1638, to submit to Convocation some amend- 
ments of the statute-book, after it had been finally ratified and confirmed. 
(Sect. Vni.) — From the alterations made in the statute-book after the death 
of the Archbishop, but during the lives of those who were his confidential 
friends, and had been his coadjutors in the work of reforming it. (Sect. IX.) 
— From the alterations made in the statute-book from time to time, since 
the death of the Archbishop's coadjutors to the present day. (Sect. X). — 
From the opinion of counsel upon the legality of making and altering sta- 
tutes, as delivered to the Vice-Chanccllor, June 2, 1759. (Sect. XI.) — p 
16.— This elaborate parade of argument (the pamphlet extends to a hundred 
and fifty mortal pages) is literally answered in two words— Quis dubiiivit t 



ASSERTORY PAMPHLET. 461 

of the affirmative being granted by us, the whole nisus of our 
reasoning was to demonstrate the negative ; we must hold, that 
since the Assertor has adduced nothing to invalidate our state- 
ments on this point, he has left the controversy exactly as he found 
it. To take a single instance :— Has he shown, or attempted to 
show, that by any subsequent act of Convocation those fundamen- 
tal statutes which constitute and regulate the Professorial system, 
as the one essential organ of all academical education, have been 
repealed ? — nay, that the statutes of the present century do not 
on this point recognise and enforce those of those preceding ? — 
(Add. p. 129—133, pp. 187, 188, et passim.) If not, how on 
his own doctrine of the academic oath, (in which we fully coin- 
cide,) does he exempt the guardians of its statutes, to say nothing 
of the other members of the University, from perjury ? — (Major.) 
" It" (the academic oath) " is, and will always be, taken and kept 
with a safe conscience, as long as the taker shall faithfully observe 
the academic code, in all its fundamental ordinances, and accord- 
ing to their true meaning and intent. And with respect to other 
matters, it is safely taken, if taken according to the will of those 
who made the law, and who have the power to make or unmake, 
to dispense with or repeal, any, or any parts of any, laws edu- 
cational of the University, and to sanction the administration of 
the oath with larger or more limited relations [i. e. ?] according 
to what Convocation may deem best and fittest for the ends it has 
to accomplish." — (P. 132.) — (Minor.) In the case adduced, the 
unobserved professorial system is a " fundamental ordinance," 
is exclusively " according to the will of those who made, make, 
and unmake the law," exclusively " according to what Convo- 
cation deems the best and fittest."* — (Conclusion.) Consequently, 
&c. 

In confuting the propositions we have now considered, the 

* See Sanderson Be Juramenti Obligatione, Prael. III. § 18. — too long to 
extract. — The Assertor avers, but without quoting any authority, that San- 
derson wrote the Epinomis of the Corpus Statutorum. If true, which we do 
not believe, the fact would be curious. It is unnoticed by Wood, in his 
Historia, Annals, or Athence, — is unknown to Walton, or to any indeed of 
Sanderson's biographers. It is also otherwise improbable. Sanderson left 
the University in 1619, when he surrendered his fellowship, and only returned 
in 1642, when made Regius Professor of Divinity. The Statutes were com- 
piled in the interval ; and why should the Epinomis be written by any other 
than the delegates ? We see the motive for the fiction ;— it is too silly to be 
worth mentioning. 



462 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL ) 

Assertor's whole pamphlet is confuted. — We shall however notice 
(what we cannot condescend to disprove) a few of the subaltern 
statements which, with equal audacity, he holds out as maintained 
by us, and some of which he even goes so far as to support by 
fabricated quotations. — Of these, one class contains assertions, 
not simply false, but precisely the reverse of the statements really 
made by us. Such, for instance : — That we extolled the academic 
system of the Laudian code as perfect, (pp. 95, 96, 144, &e.) ; — 
That we admitted the actual system to be not inexpedient or 
insufficient, (p. 95) ; and, That this system was introduced in 
useful accommodation to the changing circumstances of the age, 
(p. 95.) — Another class includes those assertions that are simply 
false. For example : — That we expressed a general approbation 
of the methods of the ancient University, and of the scholastic 
exercises and studies, beyond an incidental recognition of the uti- 
lity of Disputation, and that too, [though far from undervaluing 
its advantages even now,] in the circumstances of the middle 
ages ; and we may state, that the quotation repeatedly alleged in 
support of this assertion is a coinage of his own, (pp. 6, 11, 83, 
96, 97, 138, 139) ;— That we reviled Oxford for merely devia- 
ting from her ancient institutions, (pp. 5, 11, 12, 95, &c.) ; — 
That we said a single word in delineation of the Chamber deckyn 
at all, far less (what is pronounced " one of the cleverest sleights 
of hand ever practised in the whole history of literary legerde- 
main") " transformed him into an amiable and interesting young 
gentleman, poor indeed in pocket, but abundantly rich in intel- 
lectual energies, and in every principle that adorns and dignifies 
human nature!" (p. 113.) — Regarding as we do the Assertor 
only as a curious psychological monstrosity, we do not affect to 
feel towards him the indignation, with which, coming from any 
other quarter, we should repel the false and unsupported charges 
of " depraving, corrupting, and mutilating our cited passages," 
(p. 24) ; — of " making fraudulent use of the names and authori- 
ties of Dr Newton and Dr Wallis, of Lipsius, Crevier, and Du 
Boullay," (p. 142) ; and to obtain the weight of his authority, of 
fathering on Lord Bacon an apophthegm of our own, though only 
alleging, without reference, one of the most familiar sentences of 
his most popular work. (p. 7.) — To complete our cursory dissec- 
tion of this moral Lusus Naturae, we shall only add that he quotes 
us just thirteen times; that of these quotations one is authentic: 
six are more or less altered : one is garbled, half a sentence 



ASSERTOK/S PAMPHLET. 463 

being adduced to support what the whole would have overthrown, 
(p. 20) ; and five are fabrications to countenance opinions which 
the fabricator finds it convenient to impute to us, (pp. 9, 10, 11, 
110, 141.) 

We might add much more, but enough has now been said. — 
We have proved that our positions stand unconfuted. — uncon- 
troverted, — untouched ; * that to seem even to answer, our oppo- 
nent has been constrained to reverse the very argument he 
attacked ; and that the perfidious spirit in which he has conducted 
the controversy, significantly manifests his own consciousness of 
the hopeless futility of his cause. 

* [And what was true twenty years ago, is, in every respect, true now.] 



VI -ON THE RIGHT OP DISSENTERS TO ADMISSION 
INTO THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 



(October, 1834.) 

A Bill to remove certain Disabilities which prevent some classes 
of his Majesty's Subjects from resorting to the Universities of 
England, and proceeding to Degrees therein. 21 April, 1834. 

The whole difficulty of the question, in regard to the admission 
of Dissenters into the English Universities, lies in the present 
anomalous state — we do not say constitution — of these establish- 
ments. In them the University, properly so called, i. e. the neces- 
sary national establishment for general education, is at present 
illegally suspended, and its function usurped, but not performed, 
by a number of private institutions which have sprung up in acci- 
dental connexion with it, named Colleges. 

Now, the Claim of the Dissenters to admission into the public 
university cannot justly be refused ; nor, were the university in 
fact, what it ought legally to be, would the slightest difficulty or 
inconvenience be experienced in rendering that right available. 
But the university has been allowed to disappear, — the colleges 
have been allowed to occupy its place : and, while the actual, that 
is the present, right of the colleges, as private establishments, to 
close their gates on all but members of their own foundations, 
cannot be denied ; independently of this right, the expediency is 
worse than doubtful, either, on the one hand, of forcing a college 
to receive inmates, not bound to accommodate themselves to its 
religious observances, or, on the other, of exacting from those 
entitled to admission, conformity to religious observances, in oppo- 
sition to their faith. Now, neither in the bill itself, nor in any of 
the pamphlets and speeches in favour of the Dissenters, or against 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE. 465 

them, is there any attempt made to grapple with the real difficul- 
ties of the question ; and the opponents of the measure are thus 
left to triumph on untenable ground, in objections which might be 
retorted with tenfold effect upon themselves. 

The sum of all the arguments for exclusion amounts to this ? — 
The admission of the Dissenters is inexpedient, as inconsistent 
with the present state of education in the universities, which is 
assumed to be all that it ought to be ; and unjust, as tending to 
deprive those of their influence, who are assumed to have most 
worthily discharged their trust — In reply, it has been only feebly 
attempted, admitting the assumptions, to evade the right, and to 
palliate the inconveniences. Instead of this, it ought to have been 
boldly contended : — in the first place, that the actual state of edu- 
cation in these schools is entitled to no respect, as contrary at 
once to law and to reason ; and that all inconveniences disappear 
the moment that the universities are in the state to which law and 
reason demand that they be restored ; in the second, that so far 
from unjustly degrading upright and able trustees, these trustees 
have, for their proper interest, violated their public duty ; and, 
for the petty ends of their own private institutions, abolished the 
great national establishment, of whose progressive improvement 
they had solemnly vowed to be the faithful guardians. 

In attempting any reform of an ancient institution like the 
English Universities, it should be laid clown as a fundamental 
principle, that the changes introduced be, as far as possible, in 
conformity with the spirit and even the mechanism of these insti- 
tutions themselves- The English Universities, as spontaneously 
developed and as legally established, consist of two elements ; and 
the separate perfection, and mutual co-operation and counterpoise 
of these elements, determine the perfection of the constituted 
whole. The one of these, principal and necessary, is the public 
instruction and examination in the several faculties afforded by 
the University Proper ; the other, subordinate and accidental, is 
the private superintendence exercised in the Licensed House, 
which the under-graduate must inhabit, and the private tuition 
afforded by the Licensed Tutor, under whose guidance he must 
place himself. We are no enemies to this constitution. On the 
contrary, we hold that it affords the condition of an absolutely 
perfect university. The English universities, however, afford a 
melancholy illustration of the axiom, " Corruptio optimi pessimal 

2g 



466 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

In them the principles of health are converted into the causes of 
disease. 

In two preceding articles, [the two last,] we have shown, (espe- 
cially in regard to Oxford, but in all essential circumstances our 
statements apply equally to Cambridge,) that in the English Uni- 
versities there is organized, by Statute, an extensive system of 
Public instruction, through a competent body of Professors con- 
stantly Lecturing in all the Faculties ; but that, de facto, this 
statutory system has now no practical existence. We have 
shown that, besides this original and principal system, — through 
which, in fact, alone other universities accomplish their end, — the 
English universities came subsequently to employ two other sub- 
ordinate means, — means intended more to ensure order than to 
bestow instruction. In the first place, they required, from a 
remote period, that every member of the university should belong 
to some house governed by a graduate, licensed by the academical 
authorities, and responsible to them for the conduct of the other 
members of the establishment ; and in the second, they have, for 
above two centuries, enjoined that all under-graduates, who were 
then generally four years younger than at present, should be like- 
wise under the special discipline of a tutor, whose principal office 
it was, privately to do what the University could not constitution- 
ally, in its lay Faculty of Arts,* publicly attempt, — " institute 
his pupil in the rudiments of religion and the doctrine of the 
Thirty-nine Articles ; " but so little was expected from this sub- 
sidiary instructor, that by statute any one is competent to the 
office who has proceeded to his Bachelors' degree in Arts, (a 
degree formerly taken by the age at which the University is now 
entered,) and whose moral and religious character is approved by 
the head of the house to which he belongs, - ) - or in the event of a 
dispute on this point, by the Vice- Chancellor. We also showed 
how all these parts of the public academical constitution had been 
illegally annihilated, or perverted by the influence and for the 

* [It has been ignorantly contended against this, that the Faculty of Arts 
in the older Universities was not lay but clerical; and this on the ground that 
the learners and teachers of that faculty are frequently called clerici. But 
those who know anything of mediaeval language are aware, that clcricus 
necessarily means nothing more than gownsman, scholaris. Even the expres- 
sion benefit of clergy in the English law might have prevented the mistake.] 

t It does not appear from the statutes that the tutor must be of the same 
house with the pupil. 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE— ADMISSIONS. 467 

behoof of a private interest in the university. This interest was 
the collegial. We traced how, through the unconstitutional ele- 
vation (by Laud) of the College Heads to a public academical 
body, intrusted with the exclusive guardianship of the statutes, 
and the initiative of every legislative measure, the collegial inte- 
rest had contrived, through " the broken faith and perjury " of its 
heads, to effect the following exploits : — 1. To obtain the mono- 
poly of board and lodging, by frustrating the former easy esta- 
blishment of Halls, (authorised, but unincorporated houses :) and 
by preventing, through every disastrous mean, an influx of stu- 
dents to the university beyond their own limits of accommodation. 

2. To usurp the monopoly of the tutorial office for their fellows, 
although fellowships are in few instances (especially in Oxford) 
the rewards of merit, but usually the gifts of accident and caprice. 

3. To abolish the whole statutory system of public or professorial 
instruction in all the faculties ; and thus to render the wretched 
scantling of preliminary instruction afforded by the college fellows, 
the sum of necessary education for all professions which the uni- 
versity was permitted to supply. — -We have recapitulated these 
things, because, in considering the consequences of the proposed 
measure, it is requisite to bear in mind, not only what is the actual, 
but what is the legal system of these institutions. 

With the view of simplifying the question, and removing all 
unnecessary confusion, we shall make at once certain preliminary 
admissions. 

In the first place, we admit that the colleges are foundations 
private to their incorporated members ; that their admission of 
extranei or independent members, is wholly optional ; and that, 
as they may exclude all, they consequently may exclude any. 
The legislature cannot, therefore, without a change of their con- 
stitution, deprive them of this fundamental right. 

In the second place, we admit that, whether the religious obser- 
vances of the colleges be imposed by their statutes or by the 
members themselves of the foundation, that it would be an 
unwarrantable exercise of legislative interference, either on the 
one hand to compel them to accommodate these observances to 
the taste of those intruded into their society ; or, on the other, 
to subvert the discipline of the house, by emancipating any 
part of its inmates from the rules established for the conduct of 
the whole. 

In the third place, we admit, that compelling the college to 



468 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

receive dissenters, it would be wholly impossible to compel, for a 
continuance at least, the dissenters to the religious observances of 
the college. 

We admit, in the fourth place, that if to the colleges were left 
the right of optional exclusion, few dissenters, in the present state 
of the universities, would either condescend to enter, or be able, 
if so inclined, to accomplish their desire. — On the one side the 
dissenter would be thus exposed to the humiliation of refusal ; 
constrained, if admitted, to compliance with religious exercises to 
which he is adverse ; and exposed to all the indignities through 
which a baffled bigotry might delight to avenge itself. — On the 
other hand, the accommodation in the colleges, even at present, is 
quite inadequate to the demand for admission; the colleges cannot, 
therefore, hereafter be expected to exclude their brethren of the 
church to admit their cousins of the meeting-house, — supposing 
even the irritation to have subsided, which the victory of the dis- 
senters would at first, at least, inevitably occasion. 

In the fifth place, we admit that, as they are now operative, the 
English Universities exist only in and through the Colleges ; that 
as the Colleges are private foundations, the Universities, in their 
actual state, are not national establishments ; and that as it would 
be unjust to force the dissenters on the Colleges, consequently it 
would be, either unjust or idle, as things at present stand, to bestow 
on dissenters the right of entering the Universities. 

These admissions, though the points mainly contended for by 
the opponents of the bill, do not, however, determine the ques- 
tion. On the contrary, they only manifest the present preposter- 
ous state of the universities, and the utter ignorance that prevails 
in regard to their normal condition. — It is certainly true, that if 
in Oxford and Cambridge the Colleges constitute the University, 
the dissenters have no claim to admission ; because in that case the 
university is not a national foundation. But, that the university 
exists only through the colleges, the former being a great incor- 
poration, of which the latter form the constituent parts, is a 
proposition so utterly false, and is founded on so radical an 
ignorance of the history and constitution of the schools in ques- 
tion, that we should have deemed it wholly unworthy of refuta- 
tion, were it not maintained by so respectable an authority as 
Bishop Copplestone ; and assumed with impunity, nay, general 
acquiescence, — as a basis for their argument, by Mr Goulburn and 
Sir Robert Inglis, the representatives of either English Univer- 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE— OBJECTIONS. 469 

sit j, in the recent debates in the House of Commons upon the 
question. Mr Goulburn, in his speech against the bill, and Mr 
Baynes, in his speech in favour of it, both asserted, that when 
Edward I. visited Cambridge, Peter-House, being then the only 
college in existence, alone constituted the University. " Peter- 
House College" (interrupts the latter) " was at that time the whole 
University." " I know it was" resumes the learned representa- 
tive of the University, of whose history he is so well informed. 
At the date in question, the scholars of the University of Cam- 
bridge were certainly above five thousand, — the inmates of Peter- 
House probably under fifty ! We had formerly occasion (p. 398, 
note,) to animadvert on this mistake ; and shall at present only 
say, that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were incor- 
porated and privileged before, in either place, there was a college 
in existence ; that they flourished as general studies long before a 
single College was established ; and that they owe their downfall 
in these latter ages to the corrupt and unconstitutional subjection 
of the Academical Legislature to the control or influence of the 
College Heads. To say, in fact, that the English Universities 
are national foundations, is saying far too little. Those at all 
acquainted with the rise of the more ancient Universities, and 
in particular of Oxford and Cambridge, know that they were 
literally cosmopolite corporations; and if in their privileges a 
preference were betrayed at all, it was not generally in favour of 
the native. 

But admitting (what cannot be denied) the natural right of 
the Dissenters to the privileges of the Public University, and on 
the hypothesis, that special grounds cannot be alleged to warrant 
its suspension ; — How, it may be asked, can they make their right 
available ? 

In the first place, in whatsoever manner it has been brought 
about, the result is unfortunately certain: — Neither University 
now affords any public education worthy of the name. If, there- 
fore, it may be said, the dissenters obtain a right of entrance to 
the University, without also obtaining a right of admission to the 
Colleges, they will be foiled of all benefit from the concession. — 
To this we answer, that the dissenters and all other citizens are 
entitled to demand, that the Universities be restored to an effi- 
cient, — to a legal state ; and that the guardianship of the reformed 
school be confided to worthier trustees than those who have 
hitherto employed their authority only to frustrate its end. — We 



470 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES—ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

gladly join issue with the Bishop of Exeter and Sir Robert Inglis 
on this point. 

In the second place, it may be said : — You admit that dissenters 
have no title to demand admission to the Colleges ; the University 
requires that all students should belong to a privileged house ; 
there are no privileged houses but the colleges and their depen- 
dent halls ; the only gates to the university are therefore closed, 
— how are they to get in? — To this we say, various expedients 
may be proposed. But before attempting an answer, let us take 
a review of the rise and progress of the system of domestic super- 
intendence in the universities ; and we shall avail ourselves of the 
observations on this subject made in a former article, to which 
for proof and details we must refer. [P. 405, sq.~\ 

During the middle ages, the vast concourse of students of every 
country to the greater universities made it necessary to employ 
various methods of academical police. In the English Univer- 
sities, the chancellor and his deputy combined the powers of the 
rector and the two chancellors in Paris ; and the inspection and 
control, chiefly exercised in the latter, through the distribution 
of the scholars of the university into nations and tribes, under 
the government of rector, procurators, and deans, was, in the 
former, more especially accomplished by collecting the students 
into certain privileged houses, under the control of a principal, 
responsible for the conduct of the members. This subordination 
was not indeed established at once ; and the scholars at first 
lodged, without domestic superintendence, in the houses of the 
citizens. In the year 1231, we find it only ordained, by royal 
edict, " that every clerk or scholar [resident in Oxford or Cam- 
bridge] should subject himself to the discipline and tuition of 
some master of the schools;" or, on a different reading, " some 
master of scholars ; " i. e. we presume, enter himself as the pecu- 
liar disciple of one or other of the actual regents. And in the 
same year, the academical taxers are instituted, in imitation of 
the foreign universities, in order to check the exorbitant charge 
for lodging usually practised on the part of the townsmen. — By 
the commencement of the fifteenth century, it appears, however, 
to have become established law, that all scholars should be mem- 
bers of some college, hall, or entry, under a responsible head. 
In the subsequent history of the university we find more fre- 
quent and decisive measures taken in Oxford against the CJiam- 



HISTORY OF DOMESTIC SUPERINTENDENCE 471 

berdekyns, or scholars haunting the public lectures, but of no 
authorized house, than in Paris were ever employed against the 
Martinets. And while in the foreign universities none but stu- 
dents of the faculty of arts were subjected to collegial or bursal 
superintendence ; in the English universities, the graduates and 
under-graduates of every faculty were equally required to be 
members of a privileged house. 

By this regulation, the students were compelled to collect 
themselves into houses of community, variously denominated 
Halls, Hostels, Inns, Entries, Chambers, (Aulae, Hospitia, Introi- 
tus, Camerae.) These halls were governed by peculiar statutes, 
established by the University, by whom they were also visited 
and reformed; and they were administered by a principal, 
elected by the scholars themselves, but admitted to his office by 
the chancellor or his deputy, on finding caution for payment of 
the rent. The halls were in general held only on lease ; but by 
a privilege common to most Universities, houses once occupied 
by clerks or students could not again be taken from the gown, 
if the rent were punctually discharged ; the rate of which was 
quinquennially fixed by the academical taxators. The great 
majority of the scholars who inhabited these halls lived at their 
own expense ; but the benevolent motives which, in other coun- 
tries, determined the establishment of colleges and private bursa?, 
nowhere operated more powerfully than in England. In a few 
houses, foundations were made for the support of a certain num- 
ber of indigent scholars, who were incorporated as fellows, (or 
joint participators in the endowment,) under the government of 
a head. But with an unenlightened liberality, these benefactions 
were not, as elsewhere, exclusively limited to learners, during their 
academical studies, and to instructors ; and whilst merit was not 
often the condition on which their members were elected, the sub- 
jection of the colleges to private statutes, with their emancipation 
from the control of the academical authorities, gave them interests 
apart from those of the public, and not only disqualified them from 
co-operating towards the general ends of the university, but ren- 
dered them, instead of powerful aids, the worst impediments to 
its utility. 

The Colleges, into which commoners, or members not on the 
foundation, were, until a comparatively modern date, rarely 
admitted, remained also for many centuries few in comparison 



472 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

with the Halls. The latter were counted by hundreds ; the for- 
mer, even at the present day, extend only to nineteen. 

In Oxford, at the commencement of the fourteenth century, 
the number of the halls was about three hundred, — the number 
of the secular colleges at the highest, only three. At the com- 
mencement of the fifteenth century, when the colleges had risen 
to seven, it appears, that the students had diminished as the 
foundations had increased. At the commencement of the six- 
teenth century, the number of halls had fallen to fifty-five, 
while the secular colleges had, before 1516, been multiplied to 
twelve. 

From causes, which in our former article we fully stated, the 
universities during the period of the Reformation were almost 
literally deserted. The halls, whose existence solely depended 
on the confluence of students, thus fell ; and none, it is probable, 
would have survived the crisis, had not several chanced to be the 
property of certain colleges, which had thus an interest in their 
support. 

The circumstances which occasioned the ruin of the halls, and 
the dissolution of the cloisters and colleges of the monastic orders 
in Oxford, not only gave to the secular colleges, which all 
remained, a preponderant weight in the university for the junc- 
ture, but allowed them so to extend their circuit and to increase 
their numbers, that they were subsequently enabled to compre- 
hend within their walls nearly the whole of the academical popu- 
lation ; though, previously to the sixteenth century, they appear 
to have rarely, if ever, admitted independent members at all. As 
the students fell off, the rents of the halls, which could not be 
alienated from academical purposes, were taxed always at a lower 
rate ; and they became, at last, of so insignificant a value to the 
landlords, that they were always willing to dispose of this fallen 
and falling property for a trifling consideration. In Oxford, land 
and houses became a drug. The old colleges thus extended their 
limits, by easy purchase, from the impoverished burghers ; and 
the new colleges, of which there were four established within 
half a century subsequent to the Reformation, and altogether tia 
daring the sixteenth century, were built on sites cither obtained 
gratuitously or for an insignificant price. After this period only 
one college was founded — in 1610 ; and three of the eight halls 
transmuted into colleges, in 1610, 1702, and 1740; but of tl 
one is now extinct. 



HISTORY OF DOMESTIC SUPERINTENDENCE. 473 

These circumstances explain in what manner the halls declined ; 
it remains to tell, why, in the most crowded state of the univer- 
sity, not one has been subsequently restored. — Before the era of 
their downfall, the establishment of a hall was easy. It required 
only that a few scholars should hire a house, find caution for a 
year's rent, and choose for principal a graduate of respectable 
character. The chancellor, or his deputy, could not refuse to 
sanction the establishment. An act of usurpation abolished this 
facility. The general right of nomination to the principality, and 
consequently to the institution of halls, was, " through the abso- 
lute potency he had, procured by the Earl of Leicester," chan- 
cellor of the university, about 1570 ; and it is now, by statute, 
vested in his successors. In surrendering this privilege to the 
chancellor, the colleges were not blind to their peculiar interest. 
From his situation, that magistrate was sure to be guided by their 
heads : no hall has since arisen to interfere with their monopoly ; 
and the collegial interest, thus left without a counterpoise, and 
concentrated in a few hands, was soon able to establish an abso- 
lute supremacy in the university. 

Having thus, in obedience to Bacon's precept, " reduced things 
to their first institution, and observed how they had degenerated :" 
we are in a condition " to take counsel of both times, — of the 
ancienter time what is best, and of the later time what is fittest ; 
to reform without bravery or scandal of former ages ; but yet, to 
set it down to ourselves as well to create good precedents as to 
follow them." 

Were the system of public education in the English Universi- 
ties recalled into being, raised to the perfection which it ought to 
obtain, and access to its benefits again opened to all ; — a greatly 
increased resort to Oxford and Cambridge would be the inevitable 
result. The colleges and halls hardly suffice at present ; — how 
then can additional numbers, without detriment, if not with advan- 
tage, to the established discipline, be accommodated ? — Now, in 
answering this question, we may do so either generally, — or in 
special reference to the Dissenters. But it is evident, that an 
expedient mode of solving the problem, is, if possible, to be devised, 
without taking religious differences into account. 

The only plan that has been proposed to obviate the difficulties 
which the actual, though illegal, merging of the Public University 
in the private colleges presents to the admission of dissenters, is 
to allow them to found a college or colleges for themselves. — We 



474 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

strongly deprecate this plan. We do not, of course, question the 
right of the Dissenters, if admitted to the university, of founding 
and endowing colleges, nay of imposing what religious conditions 
they may choose, either on a participation in the endowments or on 
admission within the walls. But we regard the exercise of tins 
right as inexpedient, — even as detrimental, in the highest degree. 
To say nothing of its expense, and supposing always that such a 
measure might be carried into effect with far better means of fur- 
thering the ends of education than the old foundations, through 
their fellows, generally supply ; still it would accomplish nothing 
which may not be effected by much easier methods ; whilst it 
would contribute to entail a continuance of that sectarian bigotry 
and intolerance which, in this country, at present, equally dis- 
graces the established and dissenting divisions of our common 
faith. By this proceeding, the exclusive spirit of the present 
colleges would be imitated, justified, exacerbated, and per- 
petuated; and in the old colleges and the new together, the 
universities would become the nurseries and camps and battle 
fields of a ferocious and contemptible polemic : whereas, left to 
themselves, and to the influence of a more enlightened spirit, 
there is no doubt, but the ancient foundations will be gradually 
won over by the liberality of the age, and the charities of a 
common Christianity. We are confident, their disabilities being 
removed, and the means offered to the dissenters of a university 
education, without any forced religious compliances, that they 
would never think of establishing for themselves collegiate foun- 
dations of a sectarian character ; and we are equally confident, 
that if this were not attempted by them, and did the accommoda- 
tion in the authorized houses of the university once exceed in a 
degree the demand for admission, that the colleges would be 
equally patent to such dissenters as were not averse from their 
observances, as to members of the Established Church. And that 
such means may be easily afforded, without violating the consti- 
tutional discipline of the universities, is manifest from the history 
we have previously given of the system of their domestic super- 
intendence. 

Without, therefore, proposing to dispense with domestic super- 
intendence altogether, as was originally the case in Oxford and 
Cambridge, and as has been always generally practised in other 
universities ; and without supposing the necessity of any expen- 
sive foundations, or even of establishments that will not easily 



OBJECTION FROM RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE. 475 

support themselves ; we think the difficulty may be overcome, by 
simply returning to the ancient practice of the English universi- 
ties, in regard to the easy establishment of Halls or Hostels ; 
under any new restrictions, however, that may be found proper 
to enhance their character and utility. — These halls may be 
established under a double form. Either the hall shall consist 
only of a single house, in which its head or principal (necessarily 
a graduate) resides ; or of a number of separate houses, each 
under the care of an inferior officer, bound to report to the prin- 
cipal all violations of rule. The advantage of the latter form 
would be its more moderate expense. The great benefits which 
this return to the natural system of the university would afford, 
in breaking the detestable monopoly of the fellow-tutors, — in 
presenting to merit a free and honourable field of competition, — 
in retaining in the universities men of distinguished learning and 
ability, — in determining an improvement both of the public and 
private education, — and in raising to a high pitch the standard of 
academic accomplishment ; these, and other advantages, we may 
probably take a more fitting opportunity of discussing. In refer- 
ence to our present question, this restoration of the halls would, 
we think, obviate all difficulties in regard to the dissenters, were 
the routine of morning and evening prayers, in conformity to the 
Liturgy, simply not rendered imperative in the new establish- 
ments; of which, indeed, for the sake of religion itself, the old 
ought, perhaps, to be relieved. — But on details we cannot now 
enter ; and hasten to consider the other objections by which the 
measure for the admission of dissenters has been principally 
opposed. 

1°, It is objected, that Universities in general, and the English 
universities in particular, are not more places of literary and 
scientific instruction than places of religious education ; that reli- 
gion can be only taught on the doctrine of a single sect ; that 
the dominant sect in the state must remain the dominant sect 
in the university ; consequently, universities, and especially the 
English universities, are not places into which dissenters from 
the established faith ought either to wish, or should be allowed, 
to enter. 

This objection is of any cogency only from the miserable con- 
fusion in which it is involved. We must make two distinctions : — 
distinguish, firstly, the religious education given in the Public 
University from the religious education afforded in the Private 



475 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Colleges ; and, secondly, in the former, the professional instruc- 
tion in religion given to the future divine in the faculty of Theo- 
logy, from the liberal instruction in religion which may be given 
to all in the preliminary or general faculty of Arts. 

In so far as regards the University Proper, there is no diffi- 
culty whatever. We shall suppose this restored to life, — to be as 
it has been, and ought to be. It will not be contended that, 
either in the English universities, or in any university whatever, 
it was ever required or expected, if indeed allowed, that persons 
admitted for general education in arts, or for professional educa- 
tion in law or medicine, should attend the professional lectures 
delivered in the theological faculty. The theological faculty will 
always teach the doctrine of the establishment ; but none need 
attend its instructions beside those destined for the church : — nay, 
to the ineffable disgrace of the establishment and universities, so 
far are Oxford and Cambridge from being pre-eminently reli- 
gious schools, that the Anglican is the one example in Christen- 
dom of a church, ivhose members are not prepared for their holy 
calling, by an academical course of education in the different 
branches of theology ; and the English are the only Universities in 
the world, in which such a course cannot actually be obtained. 
The English clergyman is perhaps destitute of academical educa- 
tion altogether ; but if he enjoys this advantage, " one fort- 
night," (to use the words of Professor Pusey,) " comprises the 
beginning and end of all the public instruction which any can- 
didate for holy orders is required to attend, previously to enter- 
ing upon his profession." Yet, though the London University 
only omits, what the Church of England docs not think it neces- 
sary to require of its ministers, — a course of professional educa- 
tion in divinity, — and though the London University actually 
teaches what Oxford and Cambridge teach only in statute ; yet 
the members of that church and of these universities clamour 
against the incorporation of the London University, because, for- 
sooth, it does not fulfil the conditions which its name implies! 

We may take this opportunity, by way of parenthesis, of say- 
ing a few words in exposition of the very general mistake in 
regard to the name and nature of a University ; — a mistake 
which threatens to become of serious practical importance, from 
the consequences that are now in the course of being deduced 
from it. University, in its academical application, is supposed to 



MUST A UNIVERSITY COMPRISE THEOLOGY ? 477 

mean a university of sciences or faculties, (scientiarum, facultatum 
universitas.) 

Pleased as we are with the candour of Mr Sewell's confessions, 
— " that the University of Oxford is not an enlightened body," 
— " that we (its members) have little liberality in religion," — 
and " study logic in a very humble way ; " we should hardly 
have been moved to a refutation of his opinion, (founded on this 
interpretation of the word,) that the " University of London," 
as excluding theology from its course of studies, is unentitled 
to the name it has usurped. But when it has been seriously 
argued before the Privy Council by Sir Charles Wetherell, on 
behalf of the English Universities, as a ground for denying a 
charter to this institution, that the simple fact of the Crown incor- 
porating an academy under the name of university, necessarily, 
and in spite of reservations, concedes to that academy the right 
of granting all possible degrees ; nay, when (as we are informed) 
the case itself has actually occurred, — the Durham University, 
inadvertently, it seems, incorporated under that title, being in 
the course of claiming the exercise of this very privilege as a 
right, necessarily involved in the public recognition of the name : 
— in these circumstances, we shall be pardoned a short excursus, 
in order to expose the futility of the basis on which this mighty 
edifice is erected. 

Sir Charles Wetherell, after quoting the argument of Mr Attor- 
ney-General Yorke, in the case of Dr Bentley — (" The power of 
granting degrees flows from the Crown. If the Crown erects a 
university, the power of conferring degrees is incident to the 
grant. Some old degrees the universities have abrogated, some 
new they have erected," &c.) inter alia, contends : — " The second 
point stated in Mr Yorke's argument is equally material to be 
kept in view; namely, that the power of conferring degrees is 
incident to a university, and some particular remarks must be 
borrowed from it. Allusion was made the other day by Dr 
Lushington to a passage stated in the Oxford petition, importing 
that they had been advised that it was matter of great doubt, 
whether a proviso in the charter, restricting this institution 
from conferring degrees in divinity, would be binding and effec- 
tual, and some surprise was expressed at it. That advice I 
gave, and I considered Mr Attorney- General Yorke as my 
coadjutor in giving it, for it is founded upon his opinion. I 
understand that a charter is now asked for, to make a univer- 



478 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

sity, who are not to grant theological degrees. There is some- 
thing very whimsical in this : for theological learning is, beyond 
all doubt, one of the main purposes and characteristics of a 
university. But, say these gentlemen, (and their friends and 
advocates, at the Common-Council at Guildhall, said the same 
thing,) to be sure it will be too bad to have a university pre- 
tending to give degrees in theology, for we have neither Gtos in 
the place, nor Aoyog. The Deity and Revelation we intend not 
ourselves to recognise, — we shall ask only for degrees in arts, 
law, surgery, and medicine. But even the surgical or medicinal 
degree is likely to be amputated ; at present, at least, they have 
no means to confer it. In this state of things, (independently of 
the general legal argument with which I have troubled your 
Lordships, to show that theology, according to the doctrines of 
the Church of England, must form a part of the instruction given 
in an institution which is to be established as a university,) this 
question of law arises : — How can this anomalous and strange 
body be constituted in the manner professed ? It is to be a ' Uni- 
versity,' but degrees in theology it is not to give. But Mr Attor- 
ney-General Yorke tells us, that the power of giving degrees is 
incidental to the grant. If this be law, is not the power of con- 
ferring theological degrees equally incident to the grant, as other 
degrees ; and if this be so, how can you constitute a university 
without the power of giving ' all 1 degrees? The general rule 
of law undoubtedly is, that where a subject-matter is granted 
which has legal incidents belonging to it, the incidents must fol- 
low the subject granted ; and this is the general rule as to cor- 
porations ; and it has been decided upon that principle, that as 
a corporation, as an incident to its corporate character, has a 
right to dispose of its property, a proviso against alienation is 
void."* 

We entertain great respect for the professional authority of Mr 
Yorke and of Sir Charles Wetherell ; and should not certainly 
have ventured to controvert that authority on any question of 
English lata. But this is no such question. Here the cardinal 
point is the meaning of the word universitas, in its academical 
signification. But as the word was originally not of English but of 
European consuetude ; and as it will not be pretended that of old 

* " Substance of the speech of Sir Charles Wetherell before the Lords of 
the Privy Council, on the subject of incorporating the London University." 
London: 1834, pp. 79-81. 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 479 

it had a different meaning as applied to Oxford and Cambridge, 
(in which sense, the Crown in this country must be supposed in 
any new erection to employ the word,) from what it expressed as 
applied to Paris or Bologna : consequently, the whole question 
resolves itself into one, to be determined, not by English law, (for 
there can be neither rule nor recent precedent in the case,) but 
by the analogies to be drawn from the history and charters of the 
ancient European universities. And without research, dipping 
only into the academical documents nearest at hand, we shall find 
no difficulty in proving that University , in its proper and original 
meaning, denotes simply the whole members of a body (generally, 
incorporated body,) of persons teaching and learning one or more 
departments of knowledge ; and not an institution privileged to 
teach a determinate circle of sciences, and to grant certificates of 
proficiency (degrees) in any fixed and certain departments of that 
circle (faculties). 

The oldest word for an unexclusive institution of higher educa- 
tion, was Studium, and Studium generate, — terms employed in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and retained in those which 
followed. — The word universitas, in the common language of Rome, 
is equally applicable to persons and to things. In the technical lan- 
guage of the civil law, it was, in like manner, applied to both. In 
the former signification, (convertible with collegium,) it denoted a 
plurality of persons associated for a continued purpose, and may 
be inadequately rendered by society, company, corporation ; in the 
latter, it denoted a certain totality of individual things, constituted 
either by their mutual relation to a certain common end, (univer- 
sitasfacti,) or by a mere legal fiction, (universitas juris). — In the 
language of the middle ages, it was applied either loosely to any 
understood class of persons ; * or strictly (in the acceptation of 
the Roman law) to a public incorporation, more especially (as 
equivalent with communitas) to the members of a municipality,! 
or to the members of " a general study." In this last application 

* For instance, in 1212, universitas vestra, applied by municipality of 
Oxford to " omnibus Christi fidelibus ;" and four years after, by the Papal 
Legate, to " omnibus Magistris et Scholaribus Oxonii commorantibus." In 
1276, universitas vestra, applied, in same deed, by Bishop of Ely, to " uni- 
versis Christi fidelibus," and universitas, used as convertible with "universi- 
tas Regentium et Scholarium studentium Cantabrigiae." 

f See Du Cange and Carpentier in voce ; add Bulaeus, iv., p. 27. Fatto- 
rini, ii. p. 57-58. It was frequently applied to the college of Canons in a 
cathedral. 



480 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

it was, however, not uniformly of the same amount ; and its 
meaning was, for a considerable period, determined by the words 
with which it was connected. Thus, it was used to denote either 
(and this was its more usual meaning) the whole body of teachers 
and learners,* or the whole body of learners,f or the whole body 
of teachers and learners, divided either by faculty J or by country, || 
or by both together.^ But no one instance can, we are confident, be 
adduced, in which (we mean until its original and proper signification 
had been forgotten**) it is employed for a school teaching, or privi- 
leged to teach, and grant degrees, in all the faculties. As " com- 
munitas," which originally was employed only with the addition of 
" incolarum civitatis," or the like, came latterly, absolutely and by 
itself, to denote the whole members of a civic incorporation ; — so 
universitas, at first currently employed as a convertible expression 
for " communitas," and in its academic application, always joined 
with " magistrorum et scholarium," or some such complementary 
term, came, during the fourteenth century, to be less frequently 
employed in the former signification ; and in the latter meaning, 
to be used either simply by itself, or, for a time, frequently in 

* Paris. Bull, in 1209, Doctorum et Scholarium Universitas ; Bull, 1218, 
Doctorum et discipulorum U. ; University itself, 1221, U. Magistrorum et 
Scholarium', Henry III. of England, U. Scholarium; a history, 1225, U. 
Scholarium. — So Thoulouse in 1233 ; Montpellier, 1289 ; Lisbon, 1290 ; 
Bologna, 1235. — Oxford. Matthew Paris, c. 1250, U. Scholarium, and pas- 
sim ; Royal Charter, 1255, U. Scholarium; Royal Letter, 1255, same ; Royal 
letters, 1286, same ; Bull, 1300, U. Magistrorum, Doctorum et Scholarium ; 
University itself, 1312, U. Magistrorum et Scholarium. — Cambridge. Royal 
letter, 1268, U. Scholarium; Decree, 1276, U. Regentium et Scholarium. 
Universitas Studentium, occurs in Ross, c. 1486. 

f In Bologna and Padua, the whole body of students were styled U. 
Scholarium, (though at an ancient date, the term scholaris includes both 
teacher and learner). 

X In Bologna and Padua the students, according to faculty, were divided 
into the U. Juristarum, and U. Artistai-um. We have before us the Statuta 
Almae Universitatis Juristarum Patavinorum. 4, 1550. 

|| In Bologna and Padua, the students, according to nations, were divided 
into U. Ultramontanorum, and U. Cismontanorum. 

^[ In Padua, we have U. Juristarum Ultramontanorum, and U. Juristarum 
Cismontanorum ; the U. Artistarum Ultramontanorum, and U. Artistarum 
Cismontanorum. 

** Thus Halle, (founded 1691,) was styled Studiorum Universitas, a phrase 
equally erroneous as that applied to the new university of Frankfort — Pub- 
lica Universitas. 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 481 

combination with " studium," or " studium generale ;" * the 
other, and more ancient denomination, — as, universitas studii 
Oxoniensis, Parisiensis, &c.f — The oldest universities arose spon- 
taneously during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The 
mighty crowds drawn from every country of Europe by an 
Irnerius to Bologna, or by an Abelard or a Lombardus to Paris, 
received at first local immunities, in order to fix the teachers and 
students in the towns, which well appreciated the advantages of 
this great resort ; and the papal and royal privileges subsequently 
conceded, did not create the faculties which they then publicly 
protected. But by this public protection, the universities became 
from that moment integral parts of the Church and State ; and, 
consequently could not, of their own authority, organize new 
faculties, J not in existence at the date of their privileges. 

* For example : — Paris. Bull, 1358 ; the University itself, in a letter, 
1406.— Vienna. Charter, 1366; Bull, 1384.— Prague. Bull, 1347, and 
1398.— Oxford. Bull, 1300. —Louvain. Bull, 1425.— Aberdeen. Bull, 1526, 
universitas studii generalis. 

t The term studium generale, in like manuer, did not mean originally, 
that all was taught, but that what was taught, was taught to all. Oxford 
and Cambridge will thus only, by the abolition of the test, be restored to the 
rank of universities. " Studia generalia," (says a great jurist of the six- 
teenth century, the dean of the juridical faculties in three universities,) — 
" Studia generalia, hodie, seu publica dicuntur, scholae, in quibus publice ex 
privilegio pontificis sumrni vel principis, vel antiqua consuetudine, cujus initii 
non extat memoria, studium est privilegiatum, et permissa societas et con- 
cursus scholasticorum et docentium: continens pro contento. Potest dici 
studium generale et universitas ratione eadem, quod studia quae ibi tractantur 
universis proposita sint et sint publica, et gratis, volentibus discere, propo- 
nantur ab institutis preceptoribus, sintque privilegia universis studentibus 
concessa. Neque ideo minus studia generalia dicentur aut universitates, quod 
non omnes scientiae ibi, sed ctrtae tantum tractentur et doceantur. Nam gene- 
ralitas ad universitatem non pertinet scienliarum, sed ad publicam causam 
docendi: prout enim placuit iis qui instituerunt et erexerunt et privilegiarunt 
studia, scientiae et artes ibidem legi publice tantum debent, et si aliae 
legantur, non utuntur privilegiis quibus praescriptae docendae, et earum 
doctores et auditores utuutur et potiuntur. Non enim actus agentium 
operantur ultra illorum intentionem. (L. non omnis numeratio, de reb. 
credit. P.)" Petrus Gregorius Tholosanus De Republica, Lib. xviii. c. 1, 
§87. 

% To understand the meaning of the word Faculty, it must be remembered 
that originally, in all the older Universities, a Degree conferred the right, 
nay, imposed the obligation, of teaching ; and a faculty was, after universi- 
ties had become public, the body of teachers or graduates, who not only had 
the privilege of lecturing on a certain department of knowledge, of examining 

2 H 



482 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

The University of Paris, like those of Oxford and Cambridge, 
at first existed only in the lay Faculty of Arts. On this faculty, 
these great universities are founded, as in it alone they once 
existed ; and in the two latter, the higher faculties never, in fact, 
were separated, as in the continental schools, into independent 
corporations. In Paris, the faculties of Divinity, Canon Law, and 
Medicine subsequently arose ; but there was no faculty of Civil 
Law when Paris received its privileges ; and it consequently 
neither could of itself create that faculty, nor, for certain reasons, 
was it able to obtain papal authorization so to do. But Paris, 
though thus without a principal faculty, was acknowledged over 
Europe, not only as a university, or general study, but the school 
above all others entitled to the name. Its title was, " the First 
School of the Church ;" and so little did the term universitas 
imply an academical encyclopaedia, and a full complement of facul- 
ties, that several of the most venerable universities possessed, 
while in the zenith of their European fame, only a single faculty, — 
as Salerno, the single faculty of medicine. 

Mr Yorke is mistaken when he says, — " Some old degrees the 
Universities (of Oxford and Cambridge) have abrogated, some 
new they have erected." The former clause of the sentence is 
true, in so far as these seminaries have allowed some {e. g., the 
minor degrees in grammar and logic) to fall into desuetude ; and 
the degrees in canon law, by command of the Crown, were dis- 
continued at the Reformation ; but no new degree have they 
introduced, or attempted to introduce. The precedent thus 
alleged, in confirmation of his principle, in fact disproves it. 

In like manner, in all the Universities throughout Europe, 
which were not merely privileged, but created by bull and char- 
ter, every liberty conferred was conferred not as an incident, 
through implication, but by express concession. And this in two 
ways : — For a university was empowered, cither by an explicit 
grant of certain enumerated rights, or by bestowing on it impli- 
citly the known privileges enjoyed by certain other pattern Uni- 
versities. These modes were frequently conjoined ; but we make 
bold to say, that there is not to be found, throughout Europe, 

and admitting candidates for degrees into their bod}-, but also the right of 
making statutes, choosing officers, employing a seal, and of doing all that 
pertains to a privileged corporation. — In the Italian universities, the faculty 
was composed of the teachers and students together. There, indeed, the 
Students were originally all in all. 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 483 

one example of a University erected without the grant of deter- 
minate privileges, — far less of a University, thus erected, enjoy- 
ing, through this omission, privileges of any, far less of every 
other. — In particular, the right of granting degrees, and that in 
how many faculties, must (in either way) be expressly conferred. 
The number of the faculties themselves . is extremely indetermi- 
nate ; and, to many universities and faculties, the right of confer- 
ring certain special degrees has been allowed, the possessors of 
which did not constitute a faculty at all. For example, the 
degrees in Grammar, Logic, Poetry, Music, &c. It was the com- 
mon custom to erect a university in only certain faculties ; and 
not unfrequently a concession of the others was subsequently 
added. Thus — 

During the thirteenth century, Innocent IV. founded in, and 
migratory with, the court of Rome, a university of only two 
faculties, — Theology, and the Laws, in one faculty, — but with all 
the privileges of a " Studium Generale." This was amplified 
during the fourteenth century, with professorships of Hebrew, 
Chaldee, and Arabic ; and, finally, Eugenius IV. bestowed on it 
a complement of all the faculties. For this case we rely on 
Tholosanus. 

Pope Martin V. erected, in 1425, the great university of 
Louvain, as a " Studium Generale," or "Universitas Studii," in the 
faculties of Arts, the Canon and Civil Laws, (forming two facul- 
ties,) and Medicine ; nor was it until some years thereafter (1431) 
that Eugenius IV. conceded to it the privilege of a fifth or Theo- 
logical faculty and promotions. This case we take from the 
Diplomata themselves. 

Altdorfwas, in 1578, erected by the Emperor, in favour of the 
free city of Nuremberg, into an academy of one faculty, that of 
Arts or Philosophy, with the right to that faculty of conferring 
its ordinary degrees of Bachelor and Master, but without the 
general rights and privileges of a University. In 1622, the 
Faculties of Law and Medicine were conceded, with all privileges ; 
and the faculty of Arts also received the right almost peculiar 
to the University of Vienna, of creating Poets Laureate. (The 
right of laureation conceded to the University of Vienna by 
Maximilian I. in fact constituted what may be held a distinct 
faculty, — a Collegium Poeticum.) 

Altdorf was now a privileged university, (Academia Universa- 
lis, Studium Universale,) and her graduates endowed with all the 



484 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

rights enjoyed by those of other universities ; Cologne, Vienna, 
Tubingen, Freiburg, Ingoldstadt, and Strasburg, are specially 
referred to. Her new diploma spoke only of promotions in the 
Medical and Juridical faculties ; but it did not prohibit them in 
Divinity. The notion, however, that the Senate of Nuremberg 
could, on such a charter, authorize a theological faculty in 
their University, was found " wholly groundless ; as no state 
of the empire" (we quote the historian of the school) " was 
entitled to stretch the imperial privileges beyond the clear letter 
of the deed of incorporation, and its immediate and necessary 
consequences." — Accordingly, it was not until 1697, that the 
Senate succeeded in obtaining from the Emperor a confirmation 
of the privileges previously conceded, and their extension to a 
Theological faculty. 

Without entering on details, we may also add, that Rostoch 
was founded only in three faculties, the Juridical, Medical, and 
Philosophical ; whilst Heidelberg, Prague, and, in general, the 
older Universities of Germany, had, like Paris and Alcala, no 
faculty of Civil Law, a faculty which was afterwards granted by 
the competent authority. In like manner, Bamberg and Gratz 
had only two faculties, the Philosophical and Theological, until 
1739 and 1788, respectively ; when the Medical and Juridical 
were conceded ; and Duisburg has never, we believe, possessed 
more than the two former. A slight research would accumulate 
many additional examples, [were it requisite, to refute an opinion 
which is disproved by the history of almost every University in 
Europe. It would, in fact, be idle to contend in this country, and 
at the present time, what seminary has or has not the privilege 
of granting degrees ; when degrees, as granted by most of the 
privileged seminaries themselves, are now so justly the objects of 
a rational contempt.] 

Bat to return from our digression : — The religion taught in its 
Professional Faculty cannot thus interfere with the dissenters ; 
but in the faculty «of Arts or of Philosophy, — in that fundamental 
faculty in which the individual, as an end unto himself, is liberally 
educated to the general development of his various capacities, as 
man and gentleman, and not as in the others, viewed as a mean, 
merely towards an end, ulterior to himself, and trained to certain 
special dexterities as a professional man ; — in this fundamental 
faculty is there no religion taught? — We are far from holding. 
that if this were possible, it ought not to be accomplished ; but we 



THE FACULTY OF ARTS DOES NOT TEACH THEOLOGY. 485 

assert, and fear no contradiction, that by no university has it ever 
yet been attempted. After all the bigoted or hypocritical railing 
against the London University, for omitting religion in its course 
of general education ; in point of fact, that school omits only 
from necessity, what all universities had previously omitted with- 
out. Let those who stand astounded at this assertion, adduce a 
single instance of any university, in which religious information 
constituted, or constitutes, an essential element of its course of 
instruction in the faculty of Arts. We are certain that such an 
instance out of England will not be found. The slightest acquaint- 
ance with the constitution and history of the European schools 
supplies the reason. At present, we are satisfied with merely 
stating the fact. And as the sphere of examination for its 
degrees is necessarily correlative to the sphere of instruction by 
a faculty ; so, in no European faculty of Arts was Theology a 
subject on which its examinators had a right to question the can- 
didate. The only apparent exception is afforded by the English 
universities. And what is that ? It is an exception but of yes- 
terday ; after the constitution of the University Proper had been 
subverted ; its public instruction quashed ; and the one private 
tutor left to supply the place of the professorial body. In conse- 
quence of this revolution, some thirty years ago, candidates for 
the first degree were, in Oxford, subjected to an examination in 
the rudiments of religion and the contents of the Thirty-nine 
Articles ; and we believe that in Cambridge a certain acquaint- 
ance is required with Paley's Evidences and Butler's Analogy. 
Though contrary to all academical precedent, we have certainly 
no objection to the innovation. And when dissenters are admit- 
ted, the only change required will be, not to make the Thirty- 
nine Articles a necessary subject of examination in Oxford. 

In so far, therefore, as the University Proper and its public 
instruction are concerned, the objection does not apply ; if it be 
relevant at all, it has reference only to the domestic education in 
the Colleges. And in this application, we are not disposed to 
deny it force. Estimated indeed, by any but the lowest standard, 
the religious discipline afforded in the colleges of either uni- 
versity is scanty and superficial in the extreme ; and the men, 
who, from their acquaintance with the theology of foreign uni- 
versities, are the best qualified to estimate at its proper value 
what is accomplished in their own, are precisely those (we refer 
to Mr Thirlwall and Mr Pusey,) who speak of it with the most 



486 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

contempt. But insignificant as it now is, we are confident that a 
forcible introduction of the dissenters would not only prevent its 
improvement, but tend to annihilate it altogether. 

But again, it is clamoured : — By the removal of academic tests, 
the most influential situations in the universities may be filled with 
men, enemies not only of the established religion, but of religion 
altogether. 

Look to the universities of Germany : there we have " the 
practical effects," (says the Christian Advocate of Cambridge, 
who, not merely in honour of his office, must be allowed to lead 
the battle,*) — " the practical effects of the system, where reli- 
gious tests have been either virtually or actually abolished, or 
dispensed with altogether." — " In these learned institutions, I am 
not aware that any religious test is exacted before admission to 
degrees and professorships ; and before admission to holy orders 
and degrees in divinity, nothing more is required than a subscrip- 
tion to what are called the symbolical books of the Lutheran 
Church, and even to these, with this convenient qualification, as 
far as they agree with Holy Scripture ; 6 a qualification,' as it has 
been observed, ' which obviously bestows on the ministry the 
most perfect liberty of believing or teaching whatever their own 
fancy may suggest.' And the consequences of this latitude have 
been most fatal in their influence on the German universities and 
the Lutheran church. Opinions have not only been maintained 
by the most eminent persons in these learned bodies, but have 
been openly propounded even from the Professorial chairs, which 
are entirely at variance with our belief of the inspiration of the 
Holy Scriptures." 

Now, does Mr Pearson, or his informant, Mr Rose, imagine 
that subscription to the Symbolical Books (never, by the bye, 

* " The Danger of Abrogating the Religious Tests and Subscriptions 
which are at present required from persons proceeding to Degrees in the 
Universities, considered, in a Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of 
Gloucester, K.G., Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. By George 
Pearson, B.D., Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. 
Cambridge: 1834." — The same argument forms the principal staple of the 
pamphlet entitled, "The Cambridge Petition Examined; or Reasons against 
admitting the Dissenters to Graduate in the Universities: AA'ith remarks ou 
Clerical subscription, and the necessity of a Church Establishment. London : 
1834. " — This argument also was strongly insisted on, among others, by the 
Earl of Caernarvon and Mr Goulburn, in (heir speeches on the question in 
the several Houses of Parliament. 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 487 

generally received even in Lutheran Germany,) was proposed 
" with this convenient qualification" of a quatenus, &c. ? This is 
merely the sense in which acquiescence to their doctrine is under- 
stood by the person subscribing ; — a sense which, it is contended 
by the most pious and orthodox divines, must by its very nature 
be involved in every Protestant obligation to religious confor- 
mity. We need only mention two, — Spener the Pietist, and 
Reinhard, the most powerful champion of Super naturalism. 
Melanchthon, himself the author of the two principal Symbolical 
Books, professes, as he practised, that " articles of faith should 
be frequently changed, in conformity to times and circumstances." 
The German doctrine of Protestant subscription is not less appli- 
cable to the Thirty -nine Articles than to the Symbolical Books ; 
and what is universal in the one country, may soon become no less 
prevalent in the other. This of itself is a powerful argument for 
the abolition of so frail a barrier, — were that barrier in itself expe- 
dient. — Nay, in point of fact, this theory of subscription is the one 
virtually maintained by the most distinguished divines of the Eng- 
lish Church and Universities. We shall quote only one Anglican 
authority, but that one, on the question, worth a host of others. 
— Bishop Marsh, the learned Margaret Professor of Divinity in 
the University of Cambridge, and whom no one assuredly will 
suspect of aught but ultra reverence to the Church of England 
and her Articles, thus expounds the obligation of those who have 
not only subscribed these articles, but devoted themselves to 
minister at the altar : — ei As our Liturgy and Articles are avow- 
edly founded on the Bible, it is the special duty of those, who 
are set apart for the ministry, to compare them with the Bible, 
and see that their pretensions are well founded. But then our 
interpretation of the Bible must be conducted independently of 
that, of which the truth is to be ascertained by it. Our interpre- 
tation of the Bible, therefore, must not be determined by religious 
system : and we must follow the example of our reformers, who 
supplied the place of Tradition by Reason and Learning." The 
italics are not ours. 

But to return to Mr Pearson : — " For instance," says he, 
" Rosenmiiller in the first edition of his ' Commentary on the 
Old Testament,' the most valuable in existence, perhaps, consi- 
dered as a critical and philological commentary on the Hebrew 
text, speaks of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, as Fables." 
(Fable is a most unfair or a most ignorant conversion of Myihus. 



488 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Mr P. goes on :) — " He (Rosonmiiller) describes the history of 
Jonah to be a mere repetition of the Mythus of Hercules, swal- 
lowed by a sea-serpent ; and he says that it was not written by 
Jonah, but by some one contemporary with Jeremiah ; and he 
considers the prophecy of Isaiah as made up by one writer out of 
the minor works of several others. Gesenius, the Professor of 
Theology at Halle, maintains after Paulus, Professor at Wurtz- 
burg, that the Pentateuch was composed after the time of Solo- 
mon, out of different fragments which were collected together." 
(Not Paulus, but Vater and De Wette, were, among the modern 
German critics, the first and contemporaneous promulgators of the 
theory in regard to the compilation of the Pentateuch subsequently 
to the kings of Israel ; and Eichhorn, after Astruc, was the first 
to maintain (what even Catholic divines, e. g. Jahn, admit that he 
has made out,) the fragmentary composition of Genesis, &c. Mr 
P. goes on :) — " Bauer, in his introduction to the Old Testament, 
has a chapter on what he calls the Mythi or fables [fables again] 
of the Old Testament." (Bauer has not only a Chapter, but a 
famous Book in two volumes, now more than thirty years old, 
entitled, " Hebrew Mythology of the Old and New Testaments," 
&c. Mr P. proceeds :) — " Bretschneider rejects the Gospel of 
St John, as the work of a Gentile Christian of the second cen- 
tury." (Bretschneider did not reject, but only proposed for 
discussion, Probabilia against it ; and he has since candidly 
admitted his tentative to have been satisfactorily refuted. Mr 
P. concludes :) — " Eichhorn pronounces the Revelations to be a 
drama representing the fall of Judaism and Paganism ; while 
Semler condemned it entirely as the work of a fanatic." 

Our present argument does not require us to enter on the 
merits or demerits of the German Theology ; on his knowledge 
of which we, certainly, cannot compliment the Christian Advo- 
cate of Cambridge. But we have no objection whatever that 
he should make his bugbear look as black and grisly as he can ; 
we shall even hold it to be a veritable Goblin. Still, admitting 
his premises, we shall show that there is no consequence in his 
conclusion. 

In the first place, Mr Pearson assumes the whole matter in 
dispute, and that not only without, but against experience. — 
Admitting all that he asserts in regard to the character of Ger- 
man theology, yet to render this admission available to him, he 
was bound to show that this character was the natural, at least 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS ? 489 

ordinary, consequence of the removal of academic tests ; by 
proving, — 1°, that there was no other cause in the circumstances 
of Germany which might account for the phenomenon ; and 2°, 
that the same phenomenon had occurred in all other countries 
where the same academic liberty had been permitted. He 
attempts to prove neither, but assumes both. — Yet in regard to 
the first, it could easily be established, by demonstrating the real 
causes of the theological revolution in Protestant Germany, — 
that the relaxation of academic tests had no influence whatever in 
its production. — And in regard to the second, it is sufficient to 
say, that no universities, except the English, have ever denied 
their education and degrees to the members of every sect ; and 
that in many, even of Catholic and Italian universities, professor- 
ships in all the faculties, except the theological, were open to the 
partisans of different faiths ; and this too for centuries before such 
liberality was even dreamt of in the ultramontane and German 
universities. But did the alleged consequence ensue ? That, no 
one can maintain. Indeed, the exclusive reference to the German 
universities, is of itself an implicit admission, that the experience 
of the other European universities, equally emancipated from 
religious restrictions, is in contradiction to the line of argument 
attempted. We may mention, that so little has Holland, a 
country at once intelligent and orthodox, been convinced of the 
evil consequence of academic freedom, that it has recently dis- 
pensed with the signature of the Confession of Dordrecht, to 
which all public teachers were hitherto obliged ; and Ley den now 
actually boasts of Catholic Professors as ornaments of her Cal- 
vinist School. 

In the second place, all the examples of dangerous doctrine 
which Mr Pearson alleges are from the works of members of the 
theological faculty in the German universities ; but admission 
into that faculty was never proposed, nor dreamt of, in the English 
universities, without the former test. The instances have, there- 
fore, no relevancy. In point of fact, those who know any thing 
of the progress of philosophy and theology in Germany, know 
this : — that the rationalism of the theologians has been not a 
little checked and scandalized by the supernaturalism of the phi- 
losophers.* Were we logicians like the Advocate, we might, 



* [See (instar omnium) the treatise " De Miracnlis enchiridion," &c. The 
author, Christian Frederic Boehme, is or was a distinguished theologian, lat- 



490 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

from this phenomenon contend, that religious tests are the means 
of causing infidelity ; the German theologians being alone com- 
pelled to subscribe to the confessions of the Lutheran and Calvin- 
istic churches, 

But, in the third place, to bear upon the question, it is, and 
must be, presumed, that the alleged licentious speculation is the 
effect of the removal of all imposed fetters on the full exercise of 
religious inquiry. Yet that this is the natural result of a vigor- 
ous and unimpeded Protestantism, Mr Pearson does not admit. 
" Such opinions as these are not the natural produce of the 
German universities, — the cradle of the Reformation, — spots 
consecrated by the recollections of men, ' whose praise is in all 
the churches,' and whose names live in the pages of history 
amongst the greatest benefactors of mankind ! But in these very 
places have we seen opinions advanced, which are opposed to the 
fundamental doctrines of the revealed will of God !" — In a subse- 
quent page, he actually makes it a weighty matter of reproach 
against the London University, that Professor Muehlenfels, in an 
" Introduction to a Course of German Literature" should " speak 
of (Luther) the champion of our faith, merely as an historical and 
literary personage" 

. We are afraid, however, that the Christian Advocate is hardly 
better versed in the works of the " champion of our faith," than 
in those of the men whom he boldly represents as its most formid- 
able antagonists. We can easily show, even to Mr Pearson's own 
contentment, that there is hardly an obnoxious doctrine to be 
found among the modern Lutherans, which has not its warrant 
and example in the writings of Luther himself ; and admitting 
this, even the Advocate, we think, would deem it idle to explain, 
by so far-fetched and inadequate an hypothesis as the want of 
academic tests, what is nothing more than the natural exercise of 
that license, vindicated, not surely to himself exclusively, by the 
'•' great champion of our faith." " Idemne licuit," says Tertul- 
lian, " Valcntinianis quod Valentino ; idemne Marcionitis quod 
Marcioni : — de arbitrio suo fidem innovare?" The following 
hasty anthology of some of Luther's opinions, and. in his own 
words, literally translated, may render it doubtful, whether the 

terly Pastor and Inspector of Luckau. He maintains, that miracles are 
impossible, are not even conceivable ; and though, otherwise, a Kantian, 
impugns Kant, Fichte, and the German philosophers, for asserting a more 
orthodox doctrine.] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS ? 491 

heresies of his followers are to be traced no higher than to the 
relaxation (not a century old) of religious tests. [We must not, 
however, set down Luther for a rationalist, howbeit the rational- 
ists may adduce Luther's practice as the precedent of their own. 
For, while far from erring through any overweening reliance on 
the powers of human reason in general, still Luther was betrayed 
into corresponding extravagancies by an assurance of his personal 
inspiration, of which he was, indeed, no less confident than of his 
ability to perform miracles. He disclaimed the Pope, he spurned 
the Church, but varying in almost all else, he never doubted of 
his own infallibility. He thus piously regarded himself, as the 
authoritative judge, both of the meaning, and of the authenticity, 
of Scripture. — And though it is our duty, in refuting an unten- 
able hypothesis, to allege various untenable opinions of the great 
reformer ; so far from entertaining any dislike of Luther, we 
admire him, with all his aberrations, as one of the ablest and 
best of mankind. Only, in renouncing, with Luther, the Pope, 
we are certainly not willing to make a Pope of Luther.] * 

Speculative Theology, f " God pleaseth you when he crowns 

* [In stating the truth regarding Luther, I should regret to be thought by 
any, to utter ought in disparagement of Protestantism. Protestantism is 
not the doctrine of this or that individual Protestant ; and with reference 
even to the man Luther, I am sorry that it is here incumbent on me, to 
notice his faults without dwelling on his virtues. That what is now to be 
alleged, should not long ago have been familiar to all, only shows that 
Church History has not yet been written as alone written it ought to be, — 
with truth, knowledge, and impartiality. Church History, falsely written, 
is a school of vain glory, hatred, and uncharitableness ; truly written, it is a 
discipline of humility, of charity, of mutual love. Written in a veracious and 
unsectarian spirit, every religious community is herein taught, that it has 
cause enough to blush for its adherents, 

(" Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra ;") 

and that others, though none be perfect, are all entitled to respect, as all 
reflections, though partial reflections, of the truth. Ecclesiastical History, 
indeed, may and ought to be the one best, as the one unexclusive application, 
of religious principle to practice, — at once Catholic and Protestant and Chris- 
tian : vindicating for the Church at large its inheritance of authority ; mani- 
festing the fallibility of all human agents, and not substituting merely one 
papacy for another; whilst yielding " Christ the truth," as its last and 
dominant result.] 

t In regard to the testimonies from Luther under this first head I must 
make a confession. There are few things to which I feel a greater repng- 



492 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

the unworthy ; he ought not to displease you when he damns the 
innocent." [Jena Latin, hi. f. 207.] — " All things take place by 

nance, than relying upon quotations at second hand. Now, those under this 
head were not taken immediately from Luther's treatise Be Servo Arbitrio. 
I had, indeed, more than once read that remarkable work, and once atten- 
tively, marking, as is my wont, the more important passages ; but at the time 
of writing this article, my copy was out of immediate reach, and the press 
being urgent, I had no leisure for a reperusal. In these circumstances, 
finding that the extracts in Theoduls Gastmahl corresponded, so far as they 
went, with those given by Bossuet, and as, from my own recollection, (and 
the testimony, I think, of Werdermann,) they fairly represented Luther's 
doctrine ; I literally translated the passages, even in their order, as given by 
Von Stark, (and in Dr Kentsinger's French version.) Stark, I indeed now 
think, had Bossuet in his eye. I deem it right to make this avowal, and to 
acknowledge, that I did what I account wrong. — But again I have no hesita- 
tion, in now deliberately saying, that I think Luther's doctrine of the Will is 
not misrepresented in these extracts ; nor is the impression which they leave, 
harsher than that made by a fair summary of the work in question, even by 
zealous Lutheran divines. The following is taken from a Consilium of the 
Theological Faculty of Eostock, addressed (in 1595) to the Theological 
Faculty of Wittemberg, and given by Walch in his works of Luther (xviii. 
130). The learned Divine, Historian and Philosopher, David Chytraeus, 
was the penman. 

" You are aware, that at the commencement of the religious Reformation, 
and in your own ecclesiastical metropolis of Wittemberg, established by 
Luther some seventy years ago, when the Liberty of the human Will was 
strenuously attacked, there were many points of this very docrine of Predes- 
tination made matter of revolting controversy and assertion. To wit : — That 
the divine predestination is the denial of all liberty of will to man, both in 
external operation and in internal thought; — That all things take place by 
necessity, and an absolute necessity, so that as the poet speaks, — ' certa 
stant omnia lege ; ' — That there is no contingency in human affairs ; — That 
whatever God foresees, that he wills ; — That Pharaoh was hardened, not by 
the permission, but by the efficacious action of God. Through six consecu- 
tive pages it is maintained, that the declaration, — ' I have no pleasure in 
the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live/ is 
the voice of the revealed God ; but that there is another judgment of the con- 
cealed God, who wills that Pharaoh should perish." — To the same effect, 
Walch gives various quotations from Calixtus, the greatest perhaps of all 
Lutheran divines; and if Luther (what I think he did) did not explicitly aban- 
don his older doctrine on the point, this was at least openly done, in Luther's 
lifetime, and without Luther's reclamation, by Melanchthon. 

Though I refrain from here enlarging on the subject, I shall add one pas- 
sage of Luther himself, which, in a few words, significantly expresses the 
Manichean character of his doctrine of the human will and its relations, as 
maintained in his treatise De Servo Arbitrio. 

" Thus the human will rests indifferent between the contending parties. 
Like a hackney, if mounted by God, it wills and wends whithersoever God 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 493 

the eternal and invariable will of God, who [which] blasts and 
shatters in pieces the freedom of the will." [F. 165] — " God 

may will ; if mounted by Satan, it wills and wends whithersoever Satan may 
will : neither hath it any liberty of choice to which of the two riders it shall 
ran, which it shall affect ; but the riders themselves contend for its acquisi- 
tion and possession." (Jena Latin, iii. f. 171.) 

In this note, I have spoken of Bossuet, signifying my reliance on the accu- 
racy of his quotations ; and I am as fully convinced of his learning as a 
theologian, as of the greatness of his genius. Archdeacon Hare, (avIio has 
done me the honour to devote seventy-Jive ample pages of an excursus 
appended to his Mission of the Comforter, in refutation of my statements 
touching Luther, a refutation which, as far a& necessary, I shall consider in 
the sequel,) — Mr Hare never loses an opportunity of attacking, after his 
fashion, " the eagle of Meaux ; " — " impar congressus Achilli." Indeed, to 
speak more accurately, our assailant usually combats only a phantom of his 
own ; the Archdeacon rarely understands the Bishop. An excellent example of 
this is exhibited, when Mr Hare makes his first and principal attack on Bos- 
suet, (p. 664, sq.) ; and here, in place of the triumph which he so loudly 
sounds, from a total unacquaintance with Luther's great doctrine of Assur- 
ance, Mr Hare only shows how utterly he misconceives the import of Bos- 
suet's criticism of the Reformer. As this is an important, and, at the same 
time, an ill understood matter, I may be allowed a few words in explanation. 

Assurance, personal assurance, (the feeling of certainty that God is propi- 
tious to me, — that my sins are forgiven, Fiducia, Plerophoria fidei,~) was long 
universally held in the Protestant communities to be the criterion and con- 
dition of a true or saving Faith. Luther declares, that he who hath not 
assurance spews faith out ; and Melanchthon makes assurance the discrimi- 
nating line of Christianity from heathenism. It was maintained by Calvin, 
nay even by Arminius ; and is part and parcel of all the Confessions of all 
the Churches of the Reformation down to the Westminster Assembly. In 
that Synod Assurance was, in Protestantism, for the first time declared, not 
to be of the essence of Faith; and accordingly, the Scottish General Assembly 
has, subsequently, once and again, condemned and deposed the holders of this, 
the doctrine of Luther, of Calvin, and of the older Scottish Church itself. In 
the English, and, more articulately, in the Irish, Establishment, it still 
stands a necessary tenet of belief. Assurance is now, however, disavowed, 
when apprehended, by Churchmen high and low ; but of these many, like 
Mr Hare, are blessfully incognisant of the opinion, its import, its histoiy, and 
even its name. 

This dogma, with its fortune, past and present, affords indeed a series of 
the most curious contrasts. It is curious, that this cardinal point of Luther's 
doctrine should, without exception, have been constituted into the funda- 
mental principle of all the Churches of the Reformation, and as their com- 
mon and uncatholic doctrine, have been explicitly condemned at Trent. It 
is curious, that this common doctrine of the Churches of the Reformation, 
should now be abandoned virtually in, or formally by, all these Churches them- 



494 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

creates in us the evil, in like manner as the good." [F. 170, 
f. 216.] — " The high perfection of faith, is to believe that God is 
just, notwithstanding that, by his will he renders us necessarily 
damnable, and seemeth to find pleasure in the torments of the 
miserable." [F. 171.) — All from the treatise Be Servo Arbi- 
trio.~] * 

selves. It is curious, that Protestants should now generally profess the 
counter doctrine, asserted at Trent in the condemnation of their own prin- 
ciple. It is curious, that this the most important variation in the faith of 
Protestants, as, in fact, a gravitation of Protestantism back towards Catho- 
licity, should l^ave been overlooked, as indeed in his days undeveloped, by 
the keen-eyed author of " The history of the Variations of the Protestant 
Churches." Finally, it is curious, that, though now fully developed, this 
central approximation of Protestantism to Catholicity should not, as far as 
I know, have been signalised by any theologian, Protestant or Catholic ; 
whilst the Protestant symbol, {Fides sola justificat, Faith alone justifies,) 
though now eviscerated of its real import, and now only manifesting a dif- 
ference of expression, is still supposed to discriminate the two religious deno- 
minations. For both agree, that the three heavenly virtues must all concur 
to salvation ; and they only differ, whether Faith, as a word, does or does 
not involve Hope and Charity. This misprision would have been avoided 
had Luther and Calvin only said — Fiducia sola justificat, Assurance alone jus- 
tifies ; for on their doctrine, Assurance was convertible Avith true Faith, and 
true Faith implied the other Christian graces. But this primary and pecu- 
liar doctrine of the Reformation is now harmoniously condemned by Catholics 
and Protestants together. 

As to the Archdeacon, he only adds to this curious series. For it is 
curious, that Mr Hare should reprehend Bossuet for " grossly misrepresent- 
ing" Luther, while Mr Hare, misunderstanding, only " grossly misrepre- 
sents " Bossuet. And it is curious, that Mr Hare should reproach Bossuet, 
for attributing to Luther what is, in fact, the very cardinal point of Luther's 
doctrine. — Such is the first of the Archdeacon's polemical exploits, and the 
sequel of his warfare is not out of keeping with the commencement. 

* Mr Hare's observations under this head of Speculative Theology, (p. 807- 
812,) exhibit curious specimens of inconsistency, bad faith, and exquisite 
error. I shall adduce instances of each. 

Inconsistency. — There are several others, but to take only a single example. 
Mr Hare, on the one hand, thus concludes his observations upon this head : — 
" What a testimony is it to the soundness of Luther's doctrines, that this 
knot of garbled sentences, thus twisted and strained from their meaning, are 
all that so unscrupulous an enemy (.') has been able to scrape together against 
him, under the head of Speculative Theology!" On the other hand, in the 
page immediately preceding, Mr Hare asserts, that this " so unscrupulous 
enemy" had " never set eyes on the original Latin of any one of these four 
sentences," — all that he had " been able to scrape together" being copied 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 495 

from " one page of Bossuet." Mr Hare apparently does not think with the 
more logical Schiller, — 

" Self-contradiction is the sin of sins." 
Bad faith.— Mi Hare states, that the passages in question are taken from 
Bossuet ; and, at the same time, he parades his own familiarity with the 
works of Luther, in the discovery of these hidden fragments in the writiugs 
of the reformer. " We may guess" he says, " that the quotation comes 
from the Treatise De Servo Arbitrio," because, &c. ; and after stating 
that the sentences of the quotation " seem to form one continuous passage," 
he adds,—" but when we look through that treatise, we discover, to our sur- 
prise, that they are culled from various parts of it," &c. ; then he charitably 
admits, — " I daresay the Reviewer himself did not know this ;" and finally 
concludes by informing the " perhaps thankful" Reviewer of the different 
pages of the third volume of the Jena [Latin] edition, on which " he will 
find" them. Now, can it be believed that there could have been no "guess- 
ing" in the case, no " discovery" and no " surprise;" that the Venerable 
Archdeacon could not have thought, whatever he may "say, that the Reviewer 
did not know this," and would be " thankful" for the information so gra- 
ciously vouchsafed towards "finding" and " seeing the originals of his quo- 
tation?" Instead of the active developement of erudition and ingenuity, 
which he here pretends, the Archdeacon, in truth, only passively followed, 
though industriously concealing, the references of Bossuet. Bossuet states 
the treatise, and articulately marks, for each several quotation, the page and 
volume of the Wittemberg Latin edition of Luther's works ; and this, being- 
given, the corresponding page of every other edition is at once shewn by 
Walch's comparative table ; — a table of which Mr Hare acknowledges the 
possession. On the other hand, where Bossuet, on one occasion, forgets a 
reference, there we forthwith find the Archdeacon at fault. In point of fact, 
our champion of Luther exhibits on this, as indeed on every occasion, his 
ignorance, among others, of Luther's, perhaps, greatest work, as a whole ; his 
knowledge of it being confined to a dipping into this or that passage by the 
aid of references, which he thinks it not improper carefully to suppress. 
And yet this Venerable and veracious Churchman does not scruple to accuse 
of "falsehood," those who would deem themselves disgraced, had they been 
guilty, even in thought, of a similar disingenuousness, howbeit not in danger 
of being ignominiously plucked for so contemptible a daw-dressing. 

Elaborate error. — The whole tenor of Mr Hare's criticism shows, not only 
that he is, specially, unacquainted with the contents and purport of the book 
on the Bondage of the Will, but that he is, generally, incapable of following 
and accepting truth, for its own sake. He is only a one-sided advocate, — 
an advocate from personal feelings ; and, as such, his arguments are weak 
as they are wordy. I can afford to give only a single specimen of this, and 
I select the shortest. — Luther says : — " Hie est fidei summus gradus, credere 

ilium esse justum, qui sua voluntate nos necessario damnabiles facit." 

These words might be supposed plain enough ; but the following is Mr Hare's 

version : " This is the highest pitch of faith to believe in the justice 

of God, who by His will creates us, though by the necessity of our fallen 
nature we become inevitably subject to condemnation, without the special 
help of His Spirit." Here it is evident that Luther's meaning is wholly 



496 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES-ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

changed,— the purport of his statement being, in fact, reversed. Luther 
says, and intended to say, that " God by His will makes us necessarily 
damnable;" that is, that the quality of damnability in us is necessary, and 
necessary through the agency of His will. This meaning, I make bold to 
say, no one but Mr Hare ever thought of disallowing ; and this alone is the 
meaning in conformity with the whole analogy of Luther's treatise. And so 
accordingly Bossuet converts the clause — " quoiqu'il nous rende necessaire- 
ment damnables par sa volonte." This Mr Hare declares a " mistranslation,'''' 
by which he charitably admits that " Bossuet may relieve the Eeviewer from 
apart of his guilt" ! But in this guilt all the world, with exception of the 
Arch deacon, is participant. Let us look into any version of this work of 
Luther, — and the two at hand chance to be of these the first and the last. 
— The first is that of Justus Jonas, the friend and coadjutor of Luther, 
a version published almost immediately after the original. And he is guilty. 
The opinion of Jonas upon the subject is, indeed, expressed in the very title 
of his translation : — " Dass der freye Wille nichts sey" (" That free will is a 
nullity.") His reudering of the clause in question is as follows : — " glauben, 
dass der Gott gleichwol der gerechteste sey, dess Wille also stehet, dass etliche 
muessen verdamwt werden" The last is by the Rev. Mr Vaughan, Avho, like 
Mr Hare himself, was "sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge," 
and he thus guiltily translates the clause : — " to believe Him just, who of his 
own will makes us necessary objects of damnation.'''' And in the relative note, 
Mr Vaughan says : " This necessity is not blind fate, but arises out of the 
appointments, arrangements, and operations of God's counselled will." 
Finally, — though this be wholly superfluous, — to refer to the German theo- 
logical philosophers, they also are guilty. Werdermann, who may represent 
all, states it in his Theodicee, (the guilty criminal 7) as Luther's doctrine : — 
" Faith can and must hold God, not only for just but merciful, were He even 
to damn all men without exception ; " and : — " God's prescience and man's 
free will are mutual contraries, like fire and water." (iii. 138.) 

Such is a sample of the laborious blundering, by which " the Megalander " 
is to be clipped down to the shape and dimensions of Mr Hare's model of 
propriety. The Reformer, here as elsewhere, is made to say one thing, (so 
understood by all) to mean, and to mean to say, another, (so understood by 
Mr Hare alone.) But, was Luther an idiot ? — weaker than a dotard in 
thought, weaker than an infant in expression ? Luther, than whom no one 
ever thought more clearly, no one ever expressed his thought less ambigu- 
ously or with greater force? — The Reformer is, assuredly, not fortunate in 
his defender; and unhappily for Mr Hare himself, his Christian charity does 
not redeem the defects of his logic and his learning. 

I must not, however, here forget to acknowledge an error, or rather an inad- 
vertence of mine, which has afforded a ground for Mr Hare to make, as usual, 
a futile charge against Bossuet. In the second of the above extracts, not 
having Luther's original before me, I had referred the relative pronoun to 
" God" whereas it should have been to " the will of God." In the versions 
of Stark and Bossuet, from the nature of their vernacular, it is ambiguous, 
and I applied it wrongly. The matter is of the smallest : but as Mr Hare 
has dealt with it as of consequence, ho should not have asserted that Bossuet 
was in meaning (and intentionally) different from Luther. 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 497 

Practical Theology.* — " We," (Martin Luther, Fhiliyipus Melanch- 
thon, Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, Antonius 

* [On this head I cannot here enter ; nor is there need. In his fifty 
pages of dense typography and " prolix garrulity," though Mr Hare has not 
been able to shake (for he has not touched) even one of my statements ; he 
has succeeded admirably in manifesting his own — not singular, but com- 
mon — ignorance of the whole matter. Yet in the presumption of this com- 
mon ignorance, Mr Hare has not hesitated to scatter reproaches and insinu- 
ate calumnies, of which, by a righteous retribution, he has, in fact, been 
doomed to feel the injustice himself. — In a moral relation, perhaps, more 
than in any other, the history of Luther and the Reformation has been 
written, only as a conventional romance ; and I know not, whether Catho- 
lics or Protestants have wandered the widest from the line of truth. Of the 
following general facts I hold superfluous proof. 

1°, That after the religious revolution in Protestant Germany, there began 
and long prevailed a fearful dissolution of morals. The burthen of Luther's 
lamentation is : " Under the Papacy, we were bad, but under the Gospel, 
we are seven — yea more than seven times worse." 

2°, That of this moral corruption there were two principal foci, — Wittem- 
berg and Hesse. — Shortly before his death, Luther abandoning, calls Wit- 
temberg " a Sodom ;" and not long after it, Wittemberg is publicly branded 
by Simon Musseus, the Professor of Theology and Superintendent of 
Jena, as " foetida cloaca Diaboli." — Touching Hesse, the celebrated Walther, 
writing to Bullinger, before the middle of the century, says of its centre of 
learning and religious education : — " In Marburg the rule of morals is such, 
as Bacchus would prescribe to his Maenads, and Venus to her Cupids ;" 
while from Marburg and the chief chair of Theology in that University, the 
immorality of the natives had previously determined the pious Lambert of 
Avignon to fly, his flight being only arrested by his sudden death. 

3°, The cause of this demoralization is not to be sought for in the religious 
revolution itself; for in Switzerland and other countries the religious revo- 
lution resulted in an increased sobriety and continence. In Protestant Ger- 
many, and particularly in Saxony, we need look no farther than to the moral 
doctrine of the divines ; 

" Hoc fonte derivata clades 

In patriam populumque fluxit :" 

but in Hesse, beside that influence, we must take into account the pattern 
of manners set to his subjects by the prince ; 

" Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis." 

4°, As to Polygamy in particular, which not only Luther, Melanchthon, 
and Bucer, the three leaders of the German Reformation, speculatively 
adopted, — but to which above a dozen distinguished divines among the 
Reformers stood formally committed ; there were two principal causes which 
disinclined the theologians to a practical application of the theory. — The 
first of these, which operated more especially on Luther and Melanchthon, 
was the opposition it was sure of encountering from the Princes of both 

2i 



498 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 
Corvinus, Adam Kraft, or of Fidda, Justus Winther, Balthasar 

branches of the house of Saxony. — The second, that the doctrine itself was 
taken up and carried out to every extreme by odious sects and odious divines ; 
in a word, it became fly-blown. The Sacramentarian Carlstadt's public 
adoption of it, tended principally to disgust Luther, and in a less degree 
Melanchthon ; for Carlstadt's doctrines were, in the mass, an abomination 
to these two reformers : but the polygamist excesses of the hated Anabap- 
tists, in the last season of their reign in Munster, revolted all rational minds ; 
and, as I said, (what Mr Hare strangely misunderstands,) homoeopathically 
broke the force of the epidemic throughout Germany and Europe. 

Specially : the Landgrave's bigamy has been mistaken in its more essential 
circumstances, from a want of the requisite information, both by Protestant 
and Catholic writers ; and by none more than by the recent editor of the 
Corpus Reformatorum, Dr Bretschneider. Touching this transaction, I 
shall now state in general a few of the more necessary facts ; of which, 
however startling, I have irrecusable proof, — proof which, before long, I 
hope fully to detail, as indeed I ought ere this to have done. 

The sanction of Lnther and Melanchthon to the Landgrave's second mar- 
riage was compelled. Prudentially, and for special reasons which I shall 
not now enumerate, they were strongly averse from this proceeding, on the 
part of that Prince; but on principle, they, unfortunately, could not oppose 
it. They had both promulgated opinions in favour of polygamy, to the 
extent of vindicating to the spiritual minister a right of private dispensation, 
and to the temporal magistrate the right of establishing the practice, if he chose, 
by public law. They had even tendered (what is unknown to all English 
historians,) their counsel to Henry VTIL, advising him, in his own case, to 
a plurality of wives. Without, however, shewing at present how the screw 
was actually applied, I may notice generally, that their acquiescence was 
extorted, through Martin Bucer, a reformer and man of genius only inferior 
to themselves ; whilst the proceeding of the Landgrave was principally 
encouraged, and the scruples of the second Landgravine overcome, by the 
two court preachers, the two courtly chaplains, Dionysius Melander and 
John Lening. These three divines, apart from the Prince, were the prime 
movers in this scandalous affair ; and in contrast to them, Luther and 
Melanchthon certainly shew in favourable relief. 

Bucer, who had previously merited from Luther the character of " lying 
variety consistently displays himself in the sequel of this business as guilty 
of mendacity in every possible degree. 

Melander did not belie his name of Dionysius ; for though an eloquent 
preacher, and " the Reformer of Frankfort," he was as worthy a minister of 
Bacchus, as an unworthy minister of Christ, professing as he did. that he 
lived and wished to live only for the taste of wine. Neither shall we marvel 
how a Protestant Bishop, Superintendent, Inspector, like Melander, could 
bestow the spiritual benediction on his master's bigamy ; when aware of the 
still higher marvel that Melander, the Inspector, Superintendent, Protestant 
Metropolitan of Hesse, was, at and before the time, himself a trigumist, that 
is, to avoid all possible ambiguity, the husband of three wives at once. The 
Prince thus followed at a distance, not only the precept, but the example 
of the Pastor. 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 499 

Raida*) " cannot advise that the license of marrying more wives 
than one be publicly introduced, and, as it were, ratified by law. 
If any thing were allowed to get into print on this head, your 
Highness" (Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, champion of the Reforma- 
tion, who, — having lost, as he pleads, conceit of his wife, being- 
touched with scruples of conscience at his adultery, but which he 
[thrice] admits that " he does not wish to abstain from," and " know- 
ing," as he tells themselves, " of Luther and Melanchthon having 
exhorted the King of England not to divorce his first queen, but 
to marry a second over and above," — had applied to the leading 
doctors of the Reformation for license to have another wife,) — 
" your Highness easily comprehends that it would be understood 
and received as a precept, whence much scandal and many diffi- 
culties would arise. — Your Highness should be pleased to consider 
the excessive scandal ; that the enemies of the Gospel would ex- 
claim, that we, like the Anabaptists, have adopted the practice 
of polygamy, that the Evangelicals, as the Turks, allow them- 
selves the license of a plurality of wives But in cer- 
tain cases there is room for dispensation. If any one (for example) 
detained captive in a foreign country, should there take unto 
himself a second wife for the good of his body and health, &c. 

Lening, or Leno Lening, as he was called, seems, with both learning and 
ability, to have been a Pandarus and Caliban in one ; so that the epithets of 
" monster," &c. applied to him by Luther and Melanchthon, suited indiffe- 
rently his deformities both of mind and body. The Pastor of Melsingen, 
who, as Melanchthon informs us, was, like his Prince, a syphilitic saint, 
undertook the congenial task of converting Margaret von der Sahl to the 
faith of polygamy ; and the precious book which, on the occasion, he com- 
posed and sanctimoniously addressed to that " virtuous Lady and beloved 
sister in Christ," is still extant. If an adulterer, Lening does not appear, 
like his fellow -labourer Melander, to have been, in practice, at least, a 
simultaneous polygamist ; but when left a veteran widower, of more than 
seventy, the " Carthusian monster" incontinently married a nursery girl 
from the household of his pervert, the " left Landgravine," and keeper of 
her eighth child. 

With such precept and such example, we shall not be surprised, that the 
Hessian morals became soon notoriously the most corrupt in Germany, I 
ought, perhaps, to say, in Christendom.] 

* [The list of the divines who concurred in the Landgrave's bigamy is 
here given more fully and accurately than in the Review ; more fully and 
accurately even (though without the synonymes) than in any other publica- 
tion. The Consilium was drawn up by Luther and Melanchthon at Wittem- 
berg, 19th December 1539. It was then signed by Bucer; and afterwards, 
in Hesse, by the other six divines, who were all subjects of the Landgrave.] 



500 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

in these cases, we know not by what reason a man 
could be condemned, who marries an additional wife, with the 
advice of his pastor, not for the purpose of introducing a new 
law, but of satisfying his own necessity. ... In fine, if 
your Highness be fully and finally resolved to marry yet another 
wife ; we judge, that this ought to be done secretly, as has been 
said above, in speaking of the dispensation, so that it be known 
only to your Highness, to the Lady, and to a few faithful persons 
obliged to silence, under the seal of confession ; hence no attacks 
or scandal of any moment would ensue. For there is nothing 
unusual in princes keeping concubines ; and although the lower 
orders may not perceive the excuses of the thing, the more intel- 
ligent know how to make allowance." * 

* The nuptials were performed in presence of these witnesses, — Melanch- 
thon, Bucer, Melander [who officiated,] with others ; and privately, in order, 
as the marriage-contract bears, " to avoid scandal, seeing that, in modern 
times, it has been unusual to have two wives at once, although in this case it 
be Christian and lawful." — The Landgrave marvellously contrived to live in 
harmony with both his wives, and had a large family by each. The date of 
the transaction is the end of 1539. The relative documents were published 
in 1679, by the Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis, and are said to have con- 
verted, among others, a descendant of Philip, Prince Ernest of Hesse, to the 
Catholic Church. [It has, in fact, been stated by historians, that the doc- 
trine of Luther touching marriage, and the practice of the Landgrave, were 
the obstacles which prevented the Emperor Ferdinand I. from declaring for 
the Reformation; and some distinguished converts have openly ascribed 
their desertion of Protestantism to the same cause.] A corresponding opi- 
nion of Dr Henke, late Priinarius Professor of Theology in Helmstadt, would 
have figured, had he known it, with admirable effect, in Mr Pearson's cata- 
logue of modern Teutonic heresies. " Monogamy," (says this celebrated 
divine,) " and the prohibition of extra-matrimonial connexions, are to be 
viewed as the remnants of monachism and of an unin quiring faith." How- 
ever detestable this doctrine, the bold avowal of the rationalist is honourable, 
when contrasted with the skulking compromise of all professed principle, by 
men calling themselves — The Evangelicals. Renouncing the Pope, they arro- 
gate the power of the Keys to an extent never pretended to by any successor 
of St Peter ; and proclaiming themselves to the world for the Apostles of a 
purified faith, they can secretly, trembling only at discovery, authorize, in 
name of the Gospel, a dispensation of the moral law. Compared with Luther 
[ ?] or Cranmer, how respectable is the character of Knox ! 

[Before 1843, I had become aware, that the preceding statement was 
incorrect ; and in a supplemental note to a pamphlet published by me in that 
year, I made the following retractation : — " I do not found my statement of 
the general opinion of Luther and Melanchthon in favour of polygamy, on 
their special allowance of a second wife to Philip the Magnanimous, or on 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 501 

Biblical Criticism. — (1) " The books of the Kings are more 
worthy of credit than the books of the Chronicles." [Colloquia, 
c. lix. § 6.] — (2) " Job spake not, therefore, as it stands written 

in his book, but hath had such cogitations It is a sheer 

argumentum fabulce It is probable that Solomon made 

and wrote this book." [lb.] — (3) " This book (JEcclesiastes) ought 
to have been more full ; there is too much of broken matter in it ; 
it has neither boots nor spurs, but rides only in socks, as I myself 

when in the cloister Solomon hath not therefore written 

this book, which hath been made in the days of the Maccabees by 
Sirach. It is like a Talmud compiled from many books, perhaps 
in Egypt, from the Library of King Ptolemy Euergetes. * — (4) 
So also have the Proverbs of Solomon been collected by others, 
[caught up from the King's mouth, when he spake them at table 
or elsewhere : and those are well marked, wherein the royal 

any expressions contained in their Consilium on that occasion. On the con- 
trary, that Consilium, and the circumstances under which it was given, may 
be, indeed always have been, adduced to show, that in the case of the Land- 
grave they made a sacrifice of eternal principle to temporary expedience. 
The reverse of this I am able to prove, in a chronological series of testimo- 
nies by them to the religious legality of polygamy, as a general institution, 
consecutively downwards from their earliest commentaries on the Scriptures 
and other purely abstract treatises. So far, therefore, was there from being 
any disgraceful compromise of principle in the sanction accorded by them to 
the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, they only, in that case, carried their 
speculative doctrine (held, by the way, also by Milton,) into practice; 
although the prudence they had by that time acquired, rendered them, on 
worldly grounds, averse from their sanction being made publicly known. I 
am the more anxious to correct this general mistake touching the motives of 
these illustrious meu, because I was myself, on a former occasion, led to join 
in the injustice." — {Be not Schismatics, &c. p. 59.) 

Mr Hare indeed, in reference to this, denies the existence of such a " series 
of testimonies : " but the value of his denial must depend upon his knowledge ; 
and while he admits that he knows little of Melanchthon, proof is here given, 
that he knows hardly more of Luther. The series I have.'] 

* [I now doubt not that Luther used the word Ecclesiasticus, which the 
reporter heard as Ecclesiastes, appending afterwards the translation of The 
Preacher; for the quotation is from the Table Talk. I think no one will 
dispute this who compares, inter alia, Luther's u Preface to the Book of 
Jesus Sirach," to be found, as all the others, in Walch's edition of his works. 
(xiv. 91.) It is lucky, that Mr Hare did not discover this ; for it would 
have afforded him a text on which to hang some pages of his usual vitupera- 
tion. On this passage he indeed makes no remark. The mistake has also, 
I see, escaped Dr Bindseil, in his conclusion of Foerstemann's late elaborate, 
though by no means adequate, edition of the Colloquia.] 



502 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES—ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

majesty and wisdom shine conspicuous." * (lb.)] — (5) " The book 
of Esther, I toss into the Elbe." f [lb.] — [" And when the Doc- 

* [This is illustrated by what Luther says in the Standing Preface on the 
Preacher of Solomon, which dates from 1524. " This book, also, of the 
Proverbs of Solomon, has been pieced together by others ; and among his, 
have been inserted the doctrine and sayings of sundry wise men. — Item, the 
Song of Solomon appears, in like manner, as a pieced book, taken by others 
out of Solomon's mouth." — I shall not imitate Mr Hare's language ; but 
simply remark, that in his translation of the addition in the text, besides 
interpolating, he wholly misrepresents what Luther says, in as much as his 
version would limit the collection to the sayings of Solomon alone. — It is in 
unison with such a proceeding, to assert that I cited the sentence originally 
extracted, " as an example of licentious criticism on the Scriptures, of such 
criticism as proves Luther to have furnisht warrants and precedents for all that 
is most ' obnoxious ' in modern rationalism.'''' For, though the correlative 
passages, which Mr Hare has now compelled me to adduce, may be held to 
warrant the worst license of modem criticism ; I manifestly meant only, in 
the several testimonies cited, to show that Luther affords a precedent for 
some one or other of the various degrees of rationalist audacity, and not, as 
Mr Hare chooses to misrepresent it, that each was alleged as an example and 
parallel of the very highest. — But, as to Luther's doctrine in these passages : 
— Does Mr Hare venture to maintain, — that the opinion of biblical books 
being a compilation by unknown collectors, and, in part, from unknown and 
uninspired authorities, is an orthodox opinion,— an opinion consistent with 
any admissible doctrine of revelation ? Will he even hesitate to confess, — 
that this doctrine of Luther would, in a modern critic, be justly stigmatise 1 
as licentiously rationalistic ?] 

f [Soon after the publication of this article, I became aware, that Esther 
was a mistake for Esdras ; and this by the verse quoted. The error stands 
in all Aurifaber's editions of the Table Talk, and from him is copied by 
Walch, from whom again I translated. It is corrected, however, in the 
recensions by Stangwald and Selneccer, and, of course, in the new edition 
by Bindseil. It was therefore without surprise, that I found Mr Hare for 
once to be not wrong in finding me not right. In excuse, I can only say. 
that at the time of writing the article, not only was I compelled to make the 
extracts without any leisure for deliberation ; but I recollected, though the 
book was not at hand, that Luther, in his work on the Bondage of the Will, 
had declared that Esther ought to be extruded from the canon, — a judgment 
indeed familiar to every tyro even in biblical criticism. His concluding words 
are: — " dignior omnibus, me judice, qui extra Canonem haberetur." (Jena 
Latin, iii. 182.) Esther, I thus knew, was repudiated by Luther, and among 
his formula? of dismissal the preceding recommended itself as at once the 
most characteristic and the shortest. Mr Hare Speaks of Luther as u a dear 
friend.'" But it appears from his general uuacquaintanee with even this, the 
Reformer's favourite, and perhaps most celebrated book, certainly from its 
two recent translations into English by two Anglican clergymen, the book 
of his best known in this country,— that Luther, instead o\' being " a dear 
friend," is almost an utter stranger to the Archdeacon. For Mr Hare knows 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 503 

tor was correcting the second book of the Maccabees, he said : — ] 
I am so an enemy to the book of Esther, that I would it did not 
exist ; for it Judaises too much, and hath in it a great deal of 
heathenish naughtiness. [Then said Magister Foerster," (the 
great Hebrew Professor) : — w The Jews rate the book of Esther 
at more than any of the prophets : the prophets Daniel and Isaiah 
they absolutely contemn. Whereupon Dr Martinus : — It is hor- 
rible that they, the Jews, should despise the noblest predictions of 
these two holy prophets ; the one of whom teaches and preaches 
Christ in all richness and purity, whilst the other pourtrays and 
describes, in the most certain manner, monarchies and empires 
along with the kingdom of Christ.'' * (lb.)] — (6) " Isaiah hath 
borrowed his whole art and knowledge from David out of the 

nothing (even at second hand,) of Luther's famous repudiation of Esther, in 
his most famous work. — As for myself, I relied also on the following testi- 
mony ; and which, had we nothing else, would be alone decisive in regard to 
Luther's rejection of Esther.] 

* [On this Mr Hare, inter alia, remarks: — "The combination of the book 
with that of the Maccabees, — which the Reviewer ought not to have omitted, 
— as well asForster's remark, leaves no doubt that Luther spoke of the book of 
Esdras." — I have now given the whole relative context ; and had Mr Hare 
possessed the sorriest smattering of the Rabbinic lore which he affects, — had 
he, in fact, not been unread even in the most notorious modern works on 
biblical criticism, he would certainly have had " no doubt," but no doubt 
that Luther spoke, and could speak only of the book of Esther. I shall sim- 
ply quote the one highest Jewish authority in regard to the comparative 
estimation among the Jews, of Esther and the Prophets ; while, as for 
Christian testimonies, I may refer to almost every competent inquiry into 
the canonicity of the books of the Old Testament. Let us listen then to the 
" Rabbi of Rabbis," Rambam, Moses Ben Maimon, Moses Maimonides ; to 
him whom the learned Hebrews delight to honour with every title of Ori- 
ental admiration ; and who, by the confession of the two greatest among 
Christian scholars, 

" Solus nugari Judaeos desiit inter." 

" All the Prophetic books, and all the [Hagiographic\ Writings are of the 
things to be abolished in the days of the Messiah, saving alone the roll of 
Esther. For, lo, this endureth, like the Law of Pentateuch and the Oral Law 
[Talmud] ; and these, they shall not cease, even unto eternity. For how- 
beit the memory of all other persecutions shall die out ; . . . yet, as it 
is written, ' the days of Purim shall not fail from among the Jews, nor the 
memorial of them perish from their seed. [Esther, ix. 28.] " (Yad Chasaka, 
B. iii. tr. x., Hilchot Meghilla, c. 2, § 18 ; and passages to the same effect 
are to be found in his Ikkarim. Compare also the Midrasch Meghilla ; and 
the margin of the Jerusalem Talmud, where, among the commentators, the 
Rabbi Jochanan and the Rabbi Resell -Lakisch, from the texts, of Dent. v. 
22 ; and Esth. ix, 28, deduce the same result, by a marvellous, and truly 



504 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Psalter." * [lb. c. lx. § 10.]— (7) " The history of Jonah is so 
monstrous, that it is absolutely incredible." f [lb.] — (8) " That 

Jewish reasoning.) On the other hand, who has ever heard, as Mr Hare 
assumes, and would have it understood, that Esdras was, at any time, not 
to say always, held, even as a prophet, in any special estimation among the 
Israelites ? — Besides these there are sundry elementary errors in Mr Hare's 
relative observations on this book ; but these, as they do not directly concern 
the question, may pass. Travelled in the Ghemara, and stumbling on his 
own Church's threshold !] 

* [Luther also (lb. § 23) says : — " Moses and David are the two highest 
prophets. What Isaiah hath, that he takes out of David, and the other 
prophets do in like manner." This I presume to think inconsistent with a 
true doctrine of revelation. Inspiration borrowing ! — Inspiration imitating ! 
I did not however suppose that, reprehensible as might be the expression, 
Luther denied the prophetic gift of Isaiah. Mr Hare mistakes the passage 
translated in the text ; and, otherwise, says nothing to the point.] 

f [I quoted these words of Luther to show in how irreverent a manner he 
thought himself privileged to speak of the Holy Scriptures. Mr Hare is of a 
different opinion, which he is entitled to hold, if de gustibus non est disputan- 
dum. But in his translation of the relative context, (here as elsewhere,) he 
certainly has no right to make Luther speak as he would wish him to have 
spoken, far less to found on what he gives as Luther's, and not on Luther's 
veritable expressions. But this he does ; and doing this while he ostensibly 
defends, he really gives up the Reformer as indefensible. Only, he ought, in 
candour, to have said so, instead of saying the reverse. For example : — 
Luther, in reference to the history of Jonah, says, — " Es gehet audi eben 
naerrisch zu" ("It passes, moreover, even into the foolish.") This Mr 
Hare renders by — " And how oddly it turns out." Fidus interpres ! — 
Of Mr Hare's style of translation, indeed, I may here (instar omnium,) 
give one other sample ; where, as in the preceding, he does not enable his 
reader to detect the inconsistency by quoting, as he does on less important 
occasions, the original. — Melanchthon had fallen ill at Weimar, from 
contrition and fear for the part he had been led to take in the Land- 
grave's polygamy ; his life was even in danger. Luther came ; and 
Melanchthon is one of the three persons whom the Reformer afterwards 
boasts of having raised miraculously from the dead. At present we have 
only to do with Mr Hare's translation of the account given by Luther of the 
operation. " Allda (saget Lutherus) musste inir miser Hen* Gott herhalten. 
Denn ich warf ihm den Sack fuer die Thuere, und rieb ihm die Ohren mit 
alien promissionibus exaudiendarum precum, die ich in der heilige Schrift zu 
erzaehlen wusste, dass er mich musste erhoeren, wo ich anders seinen Ver- 
heissungen trauen sollte." May I venture indeed to translate this ? ( u Then 
and there, (said Luther) I made our Lord God to smart for it. For I threw 
him down the sack before the door, and rubbed his ears with all his promises 
of hearing prayer which I knew how to recapitulate from Holy Writ, so that 
he could not but listen to me, should I ever again place any reliance on his 
promises.") This Mr Hare thus professedly translates : — " Then, said 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 505 

the Epistle to the Hebrews is not by Saint Paul ; nor indeed by 
any apostle, is shown by chap. ii. 3 It is by an excel- 
lently learned man, a disciple of the Apostles It should 

be no stumbling-block if there be found in it a mixture of wood, 
straw, hay." [Standing Preface in Luther's Version.] — (9) " The 
Epistle of James, I account the writing of no apostle." [Standing 
Preface] " St James's Epistle is truly an Epistle of straw [in 
contrast to them," (•' the right and noblest books of the New Tes- 
tament") " for it hath in it no evangelical character." * (Frag- 
mentary Preface to the New Testament, 1524.)]— (10) " The 
Epistle of Jude is an abstract or copy of St Peter's second ; . . . 
and allegeth sayings and stories which have no place in Scripture." 
[Standing Preface, &c] — (11) " In the Revelation of John much 

Luther, Our Lord God could not but hear me ; for I threw my sack before 
His door, and wearied His ears with all His promises of hearing prayers, 
which I could repeat out of Holy Writ ; so that He could not but hear me 
if I were ever to trust in His promises." Mr Hare's translation is not only 
not a version, as it pretends to be, of Luther's fearful expressions in the pre- 
ceding passage, and is thus in reality a condemnation ; but is out of harmony 
with the reformer's whole theory in regard to the efficacy of prayer in gene- 
ral, and particularly in regard to the mighty — the almighty power of his own. 
For Luther believed, that nothing could be refused to his earnest supplica- 
tion ; and accordingly he declares, that it required only that he should sin- 
cerely ask for the destruction of the world, to precipitate the advent of the 
last day. This doctrine was carried to every its most absurd extreme by 
the other reformers ; and even the trigamist prelate of Cassel, the wine- 
bibbing Melander, exhorted his clergy to pray for a plentiful hop-harvest, 
that, (as his son or grandson records,) though himself abominating beer, 
there might thus be a less demand for wine, and he, accordingly, allowed to 
indulge more cheaply in the juice of the grape.] 

* [In various of his works, and from an early to the latest period, Luther 
denied the canonicity of St James's Epistle. — In 1519, in the seventh Thesis 
against Eck, he declares it " wholly inferior to the apostolic majesty;" and 
in the following year, in the Chapter on Sacraments, of his Babylonish Cap- 
tivity, " unworthy of an apostolic spirit." In 1522, in a conclusion, after- 
wards omitted, of the Standing Preface, he excludes it " from the list of 
canonical books ; " an exclusion, however, contained in the Standing Preface 
itself, in addition to the testimony quoted from it in the text. We find in 
the Church Postills, which were frequently republished, Luther asserting : — 
" This Epistle was written by no Apostle ; no where indeed is it fully con- 
formable to the time apostolic character and manner, and to pure doctrine." 
(Walch. xii. 769.) — Finally, it is rejected, as in doctrine contradictory of 
St Paul, in the Table-Talk. (C. lxix. § 4.)— Of all this Mr Hare seems 
ignorant; nor does he translate the passage in the text without interpo- 
lating a modification of his own. His observations are otherwise of no 
import.] 



506 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

is wanting to let me deem it either prophetic or apostolical. . . 
. . I can discover no trace that it is established by the Holy 
Spirit." [Preface of 1522.] * — ii^vqx yAv, cLka* yco.a, *ty4o$. 

As to this last, how could Mr Pearson make any opinion touch- 
ing the Apocalypse matter of crimination against Semler and 
Eichhorn? Is the Christian Advocate unaware, that the most 
learned and intelligent of Protestant — of Calvinist divines have 
almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the Revelation? 
The following rise the first to our recollection. Erasmus, — who 
may, in part, be claimed by the Reformation, doubted its authen- 
ticity. Calvin and Beza denounced the book as unintelligible ; 
and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempt at interpre- 
tation ; for which they were applauded by Joseph Scaliger, Isaac 
Casaubon, and our countryman, Morus, to say nothing of Bodinus, 
&c. Joseph Scaliger, of the learned the most learned, rejecting 
also the Epistle of St James, did not believe the Apocalypse to be 
the writing of St John, — and allowed only two chapters to be com- 
prehensible ; while Dr South, a great Anglican authority, scrupled 
not to pronounce it a book, (we quote from memory,) that either 
found a man mad or left him so. 

But in the fourth place, if there were any connexion between 
the antecedent of this argument and its consequent, we. ought 
unquestionably to find, that in this country, religious tests in 
question do effectually accomplish the intent for which they were 
imposed ; that the dangerous neology so deprecated in the Ger- 
man divines, should with us be found, if found at all, exclusively 
among those who had not formally surrendered their Protestant 

* [I have not deemed it necessary to quote any thing in confirmation or 
supplement of the extracts from Luther, relative to the biblical books, except 
in those cases in which Mr Hare has hazarded his strictures. On more than 
half of my examples of Luther's temerarious criticism, he has been silent. 
He has ventured no remark in regard to the books of — (1) Kings and Chro- 
nicles, (2) Job, (3) Ecclcsiastes, (8) Epistle to the Hebrews, (10) Epistle of 
Jude, (11) Apocalypse. The half of these likewise, be it remarked, are 
attacked by Luther, regularly and in writings formally expounding his last 
and most matured opinions. So that even if Mr Hare had been Bfi 
cessful, as he is unfortunate, in his counter-criticism, — were, in fact, all 
the extracts expunged, in regard to which he has thought it possible to make 
a single objection; nevertheless my conclusion would still stand untouched, 
— that Luther, though personally do rationalist, affords a warrant to the mos! 
audacious of rationalistic assaults. For, as observed, he could not vindicate 
this as a right peculiar to himself— aa a right not common to all. And BO 
Wegscheider dedicates his " [nstitutiones" — " Piis Mantbus I.uthai."] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 507 

privilege of free and unprejudiced inquiry. But not only is this 
not the case, the very contrary is notoriously true ; the attempt 
at fettering opinion, rousing apparently in the captive a perilous 
spirit of revolt. In fact, the nearest approximation to the learned 
freedom of the German divines, and the most enthusiastic enco- 
miasts of their writings, have been found among the English 
clergy, and in that clergy, among the teachers and dignitaries of 
the English Universities. Were we, indeed, required to look 
around in this country for the one centre, in which a spirit of 
theological inquiry, analogous to that of the Protestant Universi- 
ties of the empire, has been most boldly, most conspicuously 
manifested ; we should find it, assuredly, not in any independent 
seminary, not in any dissenting academy, but in the venerable 
school itself, of which the Christian Advocate is an ornament, — 
fenced, as he fondly contends it to be, against the entrance of 
heresy and schism. Mainly to the latitudinary divines of Cam- 
bridge, do the Germans themselves trace the determination which, 
in its result, occasioned in the Lutheran Church, the memorable 
— the melancholy revolution in theological opinion. — Conyers 
Middleton, Doctor of Divinity, Professor and Public Librarian of 
Cambridge, was, a century ago, the express abstract of a German 
ultra-rationalist of the present day. Tests were unavailing against 
the open Arianism of Dr Samuel Clarke, against the unobtrusive 
Socinianism of Sir Isaac Newton. Professor Porson ejected, after 
Newton, the text of the three Heavenly Witnesses, as an human 
interpolation ; and his decision has been all but universally 
admitted, — at least in Cambridge. Was this attempt to purge 
the Scripture of a spurious verse, a commendable act of Protestant 
criticism ? Still more commendable will be every honest attempt 
to purge it of a spurious chapter or book ; and the German critics 
must thus be honourably absolved. Was it, on the contrary, a 
culpable act of sceptical curiosity ? Then are academic tests of 
no security against the inroads of a restless exegesis. — On either 
alternative, the Advocate's argument is null. 

Again, the German Divines are denounced by him for main- 
taining " that the Pentateuch was composed out of different frag- 
ments which were collected together." He cannot surely be 
unaware that Dr Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough, and present 
Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, maintains, after 
Eichhorn, that the three first Gospels " are composed of fragments 
which were collected together." In both cases the difficulty of 



508 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

reconciling such an hypothesis with an orthodox theory of inspi- 
ration is identical ; but how different in religious importance are 
the two series of books ! — The dilemma is manifest ; and on either 
horn the Advocate is equally impaled. 

It is known to all who know any thing of modern divinity, that 
the theological writings of Eichhorn, especially his Introductions, 
concentrate in the highest degree all that is peculiar and most 
obnoxious in the German school of biblical criticism, — of which, 
in fact, he was, while living, the genuine representative, and dis- 
tinguished leader. Now, Lloyd, late Professor of Hebrew in 
Cambridge, circulated proposals for translating the boldest of 
Eichhorn's Introductions, — that to the Old Testament ; and Bishop 
Marsh, in his Lectures on Divinity, addressed to the rising clergy 
of the University, once and again recommends, in the strongest 
terms, the same work to their study ; nor, throughout his whole 
course, does he think it necessary to utter a single word of warn- 
ing against the irreligious tendency of this, or, as far as we 
remember, of any other production of the German divines. And, 
be it considered, that, whilst he peculiarly affects an ultra An- 
glican orthodoxy, the Bishop's knowledge of German theology 
is of a very different character from that of those who have been 
recently so busy in giving us the measure of their modicum of 
knowledge and understanding on this important and difficult sub- 
ject. Indeed, with the exception of Mr Thirl wall's excellent 
Introduction to his translation of Schleiermacher on St Luke, (he 
might have chosen, we think, a fitter work,) and some parts of 
Mr Pusey's book, the public had, in every point of view, far better 
be without all that has recently appeared in this country, in 
regard to the result of Protestantism in Germany. But in refer- 
ence to our argument : — If men in the situations, and with the 
authority of Lloyd and Marsh, endeavoured thus to promote the 
study of Eichhorn and his school among the academic youth ; 
either the opinions of the German Divines are not such as the 
Advocate and others have found it convenient to represent them ; 
or {quod absit !) these opinions are already throned in the high 
places of the English Universities and Church, in spite of the 
very oaths and subscriptions which it is argued are necessary in 
order to exclude them.* 

* [But of the value of Oath and Subscription in Oxford and Cambridge, 
I have elsewhere spoken in the previous and ensuiug articles.] 



VII.-ON THE RIGHT OF DISSENTERS TO ADMISSION 
INTO THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 

(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 



(January, 1835.) 

1. Speech of Henry, Lord Bishop of Exeter, on occasion of a 
Petition from certain Members of the Senate of Cambridge, 
presented to the House of Lords on Monday, April 21, 1834. 
8vo. London: 1834. 

2. Substance of a Speech delivered in the House of Commons on 
Wednesday, March 26, 1834, by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 
Bart., in reference to a Petition from certain Members of the 
Senate of the University of Cambridge. 8vo. London: 1834. 

The opponents and supporters of the recent measure for restor- 
ing the English Universities to their proper character of unexclu- 
sive schools, may pretend indifferently to the honour of having 
argued their cases in the worst possible manner ; and in the cloud 
of pamphlets, (we have seen nearly thirty), and throughout the 
protracted discussions in Parliament, which this question has 
drawn forth, the reasons most confidently urged by the former, 
are precisely those which, as suicidal, they ought especially to 
have eschewed ; and these same reasons, though cautiously 
avoided, as unanswerable, by the latter, are the very grounds on 
which the necessity not only of this, but of far more important 
measures of academical reform, were to be triumphantly esta- 
blished. So curious in fact was the game at cross purposes, that 
the official defenders of things as they are in Oxford and Cam- 
bridge do, on the principle of their own objection to this partial 
restoration of the ancient academic order, call out for a sweeping 



510 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

overthrow of the actual administration of these establishments ; 
and we are confident of proving before the conclusion of the pre- 
sent article, that, unless apostates not only from their reasoning 
on this question, but from their professions of moral and religious 
duty, we have a right to press into the service, as partisans of a 
radical reform in Oxford, (besides the Chancellor of that Univer- 
sity, his Grace of Wellington,) the Bishop of Exeter, and Sir 
Robert Inglis themselves. From the general tenor of their poli- 
tics, but in particular from their personal relations to this Univer- 
sity, (the one its representative, the other long a member of its 
collegial interest,) these eminent individuals were the natural, and 
on the late occasion, the strenuous, champions in Parliament of 
the party now dominant in Oxford ; — indeed so satisfied do they 
appear with their own achievements in the debate, that they, and 
they only, have deemed their principal speeches, in opposition to 
the Dissenters' claim, of sufficient consequence to merit publication 
in a separate form. 

In the article on this subject in our last Number, we were com- 
pelled to omit or hurry over many important matters. — One por- 
tentous error, common to both sides, we indeed (for the second 
time) exposed, — that the English Universities are the complement 
or general incorporation of the Colleges; — an assumption and 
admission, from which the partisans of exclusion were able legi- 
timately to infer, — that, as the constituent parts ivere private or 
exclusive foundations, the constituted ivhole could not be a national 
or unexclusive establishment. — There was, however, another not 
less important error, on which we could only touch ; and in regard 
to the argument attempted to be drawn from the injustice of inter- 
fering with trustees in the faithful exercise of their duty, so confi- 
dently advanced by Dr Philpotts and Sir Robert Inglis, we 
merely stated, in passing, how gladly we joined issue with them 
on the principle ; and now proceed, in supplement of our previous 
paper, to show, that, Avhen fully and fairly applied, this principle 
affords a result the very converse of that anticipated either by 
those who so rashly brought it to bear upon the question, or by 
those who allowed it to pass without even an attempt at rejoinder. 
— The following is the argument as pointed by the two Oxford 
advocates : — 

The Bishop of Exeter.- tk My Lords, ii is, I apprehend, an admitted prin- 
ciple, that where a corporation lias received its charter tor a specific purpose, 
the law of England repels, and the legislature of England has hitherto 



ARGUMENT BY THE OXFORD ADVOCATES. 511 

repelled, every attempt to break in upon that corporation, except on an alle- 
gation either that its members have omitted to perform the duties for which 
they were incorporated, or that the purposes for which they were incorporated 
were originally, or have been declared by subsequent enactments to be 
illegal, immoral, or superstitious. 

" Such, I will venture to say, is the principle of the law of England in 
respect to corporations ; and even if a lawyer could devise any p.lea in dero- 
gation of it, I am quite sure that there is no Englishman of plain understand- 
ing who would not proclaim his assent to the reasonableness of that principle. 
Now, is it, can it be alleged, that either of the universities, or that any of the 
colleges within them, have violated the duties of their corporate character, or that 
they have abused the powers intrusted to them for the performance of those 
duties, or that the purposes and object of their incorporation are illegal, 
immoral, superstitious, or otherwise condemnable ? My Lords, no man has 
ventured, nor will any man venture to say any of these things. On what pre- 
tence, then, could Parliament dare — (forgive the word, my Lords; when a 
man feels strongly, he will not scruple to speak strongly, but your Lordships 
will not, T am sure, think the word needs an apology, for you would not dare 
to do what is wrong ;) — on what pretence, then, I ask, would Parliament 
dare to set a precedent, which would destroy every thing like the principle 
of property as connected with corporations, and would violate all the sacred- 
ness that belongs to oaths — ay, my Lords, the sacredness of oaths i I say this, 
because it must not be forgotten, that the members of the university of Oxford 
have sworn that they will obey their statutes, and I doubt not they will keep that 
oath inviolate. Parliament may have the power to destroy these bodies, 
but Parliament has not the power — and, if such a thing shall be attempted, 
Parliament will find that it has not the power — to make these illustrious bodies 
faithless to the sacred duties which they have sworn to discharge. My Lords, 
the University of Oxford I know well — many of my happiest years have been 
passed within it — and from that knowledge of it I speak, when I proclaim 
my firm conviction, that if both houses of Parliament shall pass the bill which 
has been brought into the other house, and if his Majesty shall, unhappily, 
be advised, and shall yield to the advice, to give to it the royal assent — you 
will not at Oxford find a man — certainly very, very few men — who would 
not submit to be pennyless and homeless, to be outcasts on the world, rather 
than do that which they now, it seems, are to be required to do — to be par- 
ties to the desecration of what they hold to be most sacred, and to the 
destruction of what they deem to be most valuable in this life, because it is 
connected with the interests of the life to come." — (Speech, &c. p. 11, &c.) 

Sir Robert Inglis. — " The honourable and learned member for Dublin con- 
tends, that as the legislature interfered once with the universities, it has a 
right to interfere again ; but I put it upon the score of common honesty and 
honour, whether any gentleman in private life would sanction the principle 
of taking back a gift because you happened to bestow it? Tell me, if you 
please, that the gift was a trust, and that the trust has been abused, and then 
I can understand you. Until it can be proved, however, that the two Univer- 
sities have betrayed their trust, you cannot in good faith or common honesty 
require us to restore the boon which you gave I do not con- 
sider the question to be, whether the University was founded by Catholics 



512 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.-(SUPPLEMENTAL) 

or Dissenters. The present possession has lasted 600 years; and unless 
[which in his speech of the 26th March Sir Robert says, ' is not even alleged'] 
it can be proved that the trust has been abused, I contend that it ought not to 
be disturbed. Is the House prepared to take away the rights and privileges 
of this University without any proof of delinquency?' 1 '' — (March 21, 1834, 
Mirror of Parliament, vol. ii. p. 983^). 

— " I know how unpopular the practice is in this House of even referring 
to the oaths which any honourable member has taken ; but I will not shrink 
from that duty, whether the individuals who have taken these oaths be mem- 
bers of the Church of Rome, or members of the Protestant Church of Eng- 
land. Many there are sitting on the opposite side of the House, and who, I 
almost fear, are prepared to vote for the second reading of this bill, who are 
bound in the strongest manner, by solemn oaths, to uphold the two Universities. 
I call upon the House, and upon these honourable members, to listen while 
I venture to read to them the oaths which they took when they were admit- 
ted into the universities. I take the oath of matriculation at Cambridge, 

which the members of the opposite bench have taken The words 

of the oath, on proceeding to a degree, go even farther, and bind the party 
to maintain, not only the honour and dignity of the University — which he 
might contend he consults by admitting Dissenters — but even the statutes, 
and ordinances, and customs, which he cannot deceive himself in supposing 
that this bill upholds. The words on this occasion, addressed by the Vice- 
Chancellor to the party, are — " Jurabis quod statuta nostra, ordinationes, et 
consuetudines approbatas observabis." I ask the honourable member for Wilt- 
shire, and every other honourable member who has had the advantage of a 
university education, to consider the nature of the oath which they so solemnly 
took. If there be faith in man, — if there be any use in religious instruction, I 
ask honourable members to pause before they vote in favour of the measure 
now before us. I do assure the noble Lord that / do not quote these oaths in 
any other spirit than that in which I would wish him to address me, if he believed 
that on any occasion I was incurring the risk of violating any such engagement." 
—(June 20, 1834, Mirror of Parliament, vol. iii. p. 2354 ) 

The whole reasoning in these quotations, is drawn from two 
places : the one, the Bights of public Trustees ; the other, the 
Obligation of the Academic Oatlis. 

I. The reasoning from the former place — the Eights if public 
Trustees — is as follows : — Trustees created by and for the public, 
who have continued faithfully to discharge their duty, ought not 
(what the admission of the dissenters, it is assumed, will actually 
occasion,) to be superseded or compelled to resign ; — The gover- 
nors and instructors of the English Universities arc, and are 
admitted to be, such trustees ; — Therefore, &c. 

We have already stated, that we cordially join issue with our 
opponents in the principle of their argument; and our line of 
reasoning does not require that we should correct the terms in 
which their major proposition Is expressed. We may, however, 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 513 

notice, that, in the first place, it is inapplicable, inasmuch as the 
assumption through which it is connected with the minor, — that 
the opening of the Universities to the Dissenters would virtually 
compel the present trustees to resign, — will be shown, in treating 
of the reasoning from the latter place, to be unfounded : and, in 
the second, that though true, as far as it goes, it requires for 
absolute truth an extension also to insufficiency ; seeing, that a 
public trust (saving always the interest of incumbents and inde- 
pendent of all private rights of property,) may justly, without 
any allegation of dishonesty or negligence in the trustee, be 
re-organized, or placed under a different management, the moment 
that the welfare of the public renders such a measure expedient. 
A trustee, qua trustee, has, against his truster, duties but not 
rights. His only claim of continuance, is his superior or equal 
competency to discharge the office. A University is a trust con- 
fided by the state to certain hands for the common interest of the 
nation ; nor has it ever heretofore been denied, that a University 
may, and ought, by the state to be from time to time corrected, 
reformed, or recast, in conformity to accidental changes of rela- 
tion, and looking towards an improved accomplishment of its 
essential ends. Under this extension the Dissenters would be 
safe. But waving all this, and taking the proposition simply as 
it stands, it is evident that if it be assumed by our opponents, — 
That public trustees ought not to be superseded without a proof of 
negligence or abuse; multo magis, must it be admitted by them, 
as implied in their own assumption, and by all as a proposition 
unconditionally true, — That public trustees, on a proof of negli- 
gence or abuse, ought to be superseded. On the hypothesis, there- 
fore, of our proving, that the governors of either University have 
not only neglected or partially abused, but betrayed and syste- 
matically frustrated their whole great trust, these doughty cham- 
pions of the collegial interest must, on their own principle, be, 
presto, metamorphosed into its assailants. Nor is such a proof to 
seek ; it is already on record. To Oxford we limit our consider- 
ation, not that an equal malversation might not be established 
against Cambridge, but because we have only, as yet, proved our 
allegations of illegality and breach of trust, in relation to the 
former. 

The Bishop of Exeter and Sir Robert Inglis, not only assert 
that no abuse of trust can justly be alleged against the Univer- 
sities, (meaning of course in reference to Oxford, the Heads of 

2 K 



514 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

Houses, who are by law solely bound, and exclusively competent, 
to prevent, and who, consequently, have alone the power to tole- 
rate and perpetuate abuses,) but that no one has ever dared to 
hazard such an allegation. " Is it," (says the former,) " can it 
be alleged, that either of the Universities, or that any of the 
Colleges within them, have violated the duties of their corporate 
character, or that they have abused the powers intrusted to them 
for the performance of those duties? My Lords, no man has 
ventured, nor ivill any man venture, to say any of these things.'' 
And with equal confidence the latter avers that such abuse " is 
not even alleged" Defiance like this, from such a quarter, was 
alone wanted to carry to its climax the history of that official 
treason of which the University of Oxford has been the prey ; 
for not only has the abuse of trust in this venerable school been 
denounced by us as unparalleled in the annals of any other Chris- 
tian institution, but our exposure of it has been so complete that 
those interested in its continuance, — those on whom defence was 
a necessity, moral and religious, have been unable to allege a 
single word in vindication.* 

It is now above three years and a half since we published a 
principal, and above three years since we subjoined a supple- 
mentary, article on the subject. [Nos. iv. v. of this series.] 

In these we stated, that though Great Britain, from the con- 
stituency of its unreformed Parliament, was by nature the happy 
paradise of jobs; yet that in that country the lawless usurpation 
of which the two great national Universities of England had been 
the victims, (from the magnitude of the public evil, and the singu- 
lar character of the circumstances under which it was accom- 
plished,) stands pre-eminent and alone. With more immediate 
reference to Oxford, we showed that it was at once conspicuous 
for the extent to which the most important interests of the public 

* Iu deference to the common sense and common honesty of the collegia! 
interest, we shall not consider two unparalleled pamphlets, published (by 
one of its Fellows, we presume) under the name of " A Member of Convo- 
cation," as representing more than the moral eccentricities of an individual. 
Our exposure is not to be refuted, by regularly quoting, as from as, particu- 
lar passages we never wrote, and by systematically combating, as our argu- 
ment, the very converse of every general position we actually maintained. 

We are, however, pleased to see that the Quarterly Review has been 
driven to a similar tactic, in attempting to Bay something in answer to our 
recent article on the present subject, in its last Number. But we have fro 
room at present to expose its misrepresentations. 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 515 

had been sacrificed to private ends, — for the unholy disregard dis- 
played in its consummation of every moral and religious tie, — 
for the sacred character of the agents through whom the unholy 
treason had been perpetrated, — for the systematic perjury it has 
naturalized in this great seminary of religious education, — for the 
apathy with which the public detriment has been tolerated by the 
State, the impiety by the Church, — and, last not least, for the 
unacquaintance so universally manifested with so flagrant a cor- 
ruption. 

1. We showed in the first place, that a great breach of trust 
had been committed, — That there were two systems of education 
to be distinguished in the English Universities ; a legal, non-exist- 
ent in fact, and an actual, non-existent in law ; and that in 
Oxford no two systems could be imagined more universally and 
diametrically opposed — in ends — in conditions — in means. 

In the Legal system, the end, for the sake of which the Uni- 
versity is privileged by the nation, and that consequently impe- 
ratively prescribed by the statutes, is to afford public education in 
the faculties of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts, and to certify 
— by the testimony of a degree — that this education had in one 
or other of these faculties been effectually received. — In the Ille- 
gal, degrees are still ostensibly accorded in all the faculties : but 
they are now empty, or rather delusive, distinctions; for the 
only education at present requisite for all degrees, is the private 
tuition afforded by the colleges in the elementary department of 
the lowest faculty alone. Of ten degrees still granted in Oxford, 
all are given without the statutory conditions ; and nine are, 
except for the privileges not withdrawn from them, utterly worth- 
less. 

In the Legal system, it is, of course, involved as conditions. 
that the candidate for a degree shall have spent a sufficient time 
in the University, and this in attendance on the public courses 
of that faculty in which he purposes to graduate. — In the Illegal, 
when the statutory education in the higher faculties, and the 
higher department of the lowest, was no longer afforded, these rela- 
tive conditions, were, though indispensable by statute, replaced, 
in practice, by empty standing. 

The Legal system, as its necessary mean, employs in every 
faculty a cooperative body of select Professors, publicly teaching 
in conformity to statutory regulation. — The Illegal, (in which 
the mutilated remnant of professorial instruction is little more 



510 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

than a nomimal appendage,) abandons the petty fragment of pri- 
vate education it precariously affords, as a perquisite, to the inca- 
pacity of an individual, Fellow by chance, and Tutor by usurpation. 
England is thus the only Christian country, where the Parson, 
if he reach the University at all, receives only the same minimum 
of theological tuition as the Squire ; — the only civilized country, 
where the degree, which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly 
of practice, is conferred without either instruction or examina- 
tion ; — the only country in the world, where the Physician is 
turned loose upon society with extraordinary privileges, but without 
professional education or even the slightest guarantee for his skill. 

2. We showed, in the second place, by whom the breach of 
trust had been committed. — The perfidious trustees were the 
Heads of the private corporations or Colleges in connexion with 
the University. The Colleges, though endowments limited to 
the members, are wholly extraneous to the corporation, of 
the University. Their Felloivs, who, in general, obtain the situa- 
tion from any other qualification than literary merit, far less from 
their capacity for instruction, are unknown even by name in the 
academical charters and statutes ; and it is only at a recent date, 
and for private ends, that, by a royal ordinance, the Heads of 
these private corporations were unconstitutionally elevated into 
the incapable and faithless rulers of the public corporation, to 
which, qua college heads, they were and are wholly foreign. The 
Caroline statute, procured by the influence of Laud, bestowed on 
the heads of houses, 1°, the guardianship of the statutes, and, 
2°, with the duty of watching over the improvement of the Uni- 
versity, the initiative of every new law ; the legislative power 
remaining always with the Convocation, i. e. the assemby of all 
the full graduates in connexion with the University. The acade- 
mic Legislature, however, declare, that as the Heads and Chancel- 
lor are emancipated from the penalties of ordinary transgressors. 
" so on them there is laid a weightier obligation of conscience :" 
and " seeing that to their fidelity is intrusted the keeping and 
guardianship of the statutes, if (may it never happen !) through 
their negligence or inactivity, they Buffer any statutes whatever 
to fall into desuetude, and to be, as it were, silently abrogated, 

IN THAT EVENT WE DECREE THEM GUILTY OF VIOLA TED TRIST 
AND PERJURY." 

3. In the third place, we exposed the interested /notices and 

the paltry means which determined, and the circumstances which 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 517 

rendered possible, the universal frustration of the constitutive sta- 
tutes, and consequent suspension of the University ; for a Univer- 
sity only exists as a privileged instrument of public education. 

4. In the fourth place, we proved, that the Collegial Heads 
themselves were fully conscious, that the change from the sta- 
tutory to the illegal system is at once greatly for their private 
advantage, and greatly for the disadvantage of the University and 
nation. For, rather than allow its merits to be canvassed, by 
venturing to ask for the actual system a legal sanction, even 
from a friendly house of Convocation, these betrayers of their 
public trust have gone on from generation to generation volun- 
tarily perjuring themselves, and denying the privileges of the 
University to all who would not be constrained to follow their 
flagitious example. 

Such was the burden of the accusation. The accused were the 
collegial interest and its heads, — the reverend governors of the 
University, — a class of churchmen who now resist the natural 
right of the Dissenters to education in the national seminaries, 
on the plea, that Oxford is, in their hands, less a school of 
learning than of pious orthodoxy, and who, heretofore pugna- 
ciously alive on every trivial disparagement of their literary 
estimation, were now called forth by honour and by sacred duty 
to vindicate even their moral and religions respectability. In 
such circumstances, where silence was tantamount to confession, 
confession to disgrace, what does such unwonted, such unnatural 
torpidity proclaim ? 

" Pudet hcec opprobria nobis 

Et did potuisse, et non potuisse refellV 

This alone can explain or excuse their quiescence. Yet listen to 
the advocates of these self-confessing culprits. " My Lords, no 
man has ventured, nor will any man venture to say, either that 
they have omitted to perform the duties for which they were 
incorporated, or that they have abused the powers intrusted 
to them for the performance of their duties." " Nemo, Hercule, 
nemo ! ■' 

" For who dare deem that Lais is unchaste?" 

But in thus ignoring (in ignorance we are bound to believe) 
before the two Houses of Parliament, not only the delinquency, 
but its exposure, the advocates of the collegial interest did not, we 
must admit, transcend the general unacquaintance of the Legisla- 
ture with all that appertained to the constitution and history, the 



518 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

rights and interests of the Universities. Not a single voice was 
raised in either House to signalize the misstatement and to retort 
the argument. Indeed the most elementary ignorance of acade- 
mical relations was manifested in the bill, and pervaded the whole 
course of the subsequent debates. The bill was preposterous, (we 
use the word in its proper signification,) and confounded what 
ought to have been, not only distinguished but contrasted. The 
Dissenters could only claim admission into the Universities as 
national schools; but as national schools they had been suspended, 
and an intrusive private tuition allowed to usurp the place of the 
public education organized and privileged by law. But instead 
of first simply demanding, what could not possibly have been 
refused, the restoration of the Universities to their public and 
statutory existence, and with which restoration the universal 
admissibility of the lieges would have followed as a corollary ; the 
Bill and its supporters first recognised the conversion of the 
national Universities into a complement of private corporations, 
and then, of course, were fairly defeated in their summary attempt, 
to deal with these private and sectarian colleges as with cosmopo- 
lite and Christian schools. It may, indeed it must, before long 
become a question how far the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge 
should remain exclusive foundations. This question is, however, 
one of complicated difficulties, from the confliction, in every form 
and degree, of public expediency and private rights ; — difficulties, 
which can hardly admit of an equitable solution by any general 
measure, but would require a special adjustment and compromise 
in the case of almost every separate corporation. In some col- 
leges the fellowships could, without injustice, be at once thrown 
open, and unconditionally presented as the rewards of academical 
distinction ; in others this could not be effected perhaps at all, or 
not without an adequate compensation. But the University and 
its education are not in the very least dependent on the colleges ; 
and, in so far as these may be desirous of constituting a part of 
the general academical system, they arc completely under the 
control of the University and State. The colleges, as strictly 
limited to the members of their own foundations, are. indeed. 
governed by their private statutes and emancipated from the 
visitation of the University ; but as licensed houses of superin- 
tendence and tuition for the academical youth in general, they can 
either, by the University and nation, be deprived of their license 
altogether, or this conceded to them under any conditions which 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 519 

the public corporation or the state may find it expedient for the 
general advantage to impose. In so far as Colleges have, latterly, 
been opened to independent members, they are tantamount to 
Halls ; and Halls were always subject to the regulations of the 
university. In our last article, we were wrong in not taking this 
distinction; and in admitting that, as the colleges could not be com- 
pelled to receive any independent members at all, they could not 
be prevented from making a selection if they did. But the Uni- 
versity has a right to say : The houses which we privilege to receive 
students, these we authorize every student to enter ; the colleges 
must therefore admit all willing to conform to their economy, or 
none. And considering them as incorporations, if their fellowships 
were thrown open as prizes of literary merit, they would of 
course contribute powerfully to the prosperity of the University ; 
but if, as at present, they continued only to crowd the hive with 
drones, it would still be the fault of the University were they suf- 
fered any longer to operate as a direct impediment to its utility, 
by usurping, for their fellows, functions which they are rarely 
competent to perform. 

But to return to our argument : To complicate questions of so 
clear and simple a solution as the right of Dissenters to admission 
into the national Universities, and the proper mode of rendering 
that right available, with the difficult and ravelled problems touch- 
ing the various collegiate foundations of Oxford and Cambridge, 
is, to say the least of it, in every point of view highly inexpe- 
dient. It is often easy to drive a wedge where it is impossible to 
pass a needle. The great measure of a restoration of the Univer- 
sity, in Oxford and Cambridge, to legal existence and unexclusive 
nationality could not be resisted ; while the comparatively petty 
measure of opening, brevi manu, the English Colleges to the Dis- 
senters was successfully opposed. A restoration of the University 
is, in fact, the only mode through which the Dissenters ought to 
condescend to accept admission — into Oxford at least. They were 
plainly told by a member of that University, an active supporter 
of their rights in Parliament, (Mr Vernon Smith,) that a hunted 
cur, with a kettle at his tail, was but a type of the manner in 
which a Dissenter would be baited in an Oxford College, under 
the spirit of the present system. Let that system be changed. 
Let the Tutorial instruction be elevated, the Professorial re-estab- 
lished and improved. Let the youth of the University no longer 
imbibe only the small prejudices of small men. Let them be again 



520 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.; 

presented with a high standard of erudition and ability. Let the 
public schools once more daily collect them in numerous classes to 
hear the words of wisdom and liberality, and to merge in a gene- 
rous, sustained, and universal emulation, the paltry passions and 
contemptible distinctions which the isolation of the College cote- 
ries now breeds and fosters. Then will a Dissenter be as sure of 
civility and respect in Oxford, as in Leyden, Gottingen, Edin- 
burgh, or even Cambridge. But in point of fact, if that be worthy 
of the attempt, the surest way of conquering an entrance into the 
Colleges is to make the University accessible, — and not through 
them. Let the University again be patent to every sect, with 
the Halls in the course of restoration : and, like a sulky Boniface, 
with the fear of a rival hostelry before his eyes, every head of 
every College will, cap in hand, be fain to waylay the Dissenters 
at its gate, with bows and smiles, and a " Walk in, gentlemen ! — 
Pray, walk in !" Decided symptoms, indeed, of this spasmodic 
complaisance have already been manifested. 

It would be a sign of marvellous simplicity to believe, that the 
opposition of the Collegia! interest to the admission of Dissenters 
is principally, if at all, determined by religious differences and 
religious motives. If this admission were for the temporal advan- 
tage of the present usurpers of the University, we should hear no 
hypocritical clamour about their spiritual obligations. Their con- 
science is merely a stalking-horse, moved by their interest, and to 
conceal it. We make no allegations which we cannot prove. They 
protest, with tragic emphasis, against the admission of Dissenters : 
because, they say, they are bound by their academic oaths and 
statutes to exclude them. We are soon to show, that these sta- 
tutes can be modified or rescinded by the state, and consequently 
the oath relieved. Their clamour is, therefore, idle. But we 
shall admit their hypothesis, and prove their hypocrisy notwith- 
standing. Suppose a legislature to impose two obligations ; one 
comparatively strong, one comparatively weak. If, in these cir- 
cumstances, a man can habitually violate the former, how shall he 
be designated should he vociferate against the constitutional repeal 
of the latter as an outrage on his conscience ? — But this is n< 
strong as the case under consideration. The academic legislature 
of Oxford imposes two such obligations. The stronger, that, to 
observance of its Statutes, is established on a solemn oath, which 
is allowed only to be deliberately taken by members after attain- 
ing the age of sixteen. The weaker, that, to a belief in the 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 521 

Thirty-nine Articles, is established only on subscription; and so 
slight is the obligation held to be, by the very authority imposing 
it, that this subscription is lightly required (not merely of young 
men of sixteen, as marvellously stated by the Bishop of Exeter 
and all others in Parliament, but) of children entering the Univer- 
sity, at the tender age of twelve. Now, with what face can the 
very men who have done two things : — in the first place, systema- 
tically outraged the stronger and more sacred obligation of the 
academic oath; and, in the second, done all in their power to 
attenuate to zero the weaker and less sacred obligation of the 
academic subscription : — with what face can they, when it is pro- 
posed by the state, to repeal this subscription, gravely call out 
against that measure as " a persecution," — as a compelling them 
" to be parties to the desecration of what they hold to be most 
sacred, and to the destruction of what they deem to be most 
valuable in this life, because it is connected with the interests of 
the life to come?" — (Bishop of Exeter's Speech, pp. 9, 10, 13.) — 
Have they not done the former? Has the collegial interest not 
frustrated every fundamental Statute of the University — every 
statute opposed to its own usurpation of every necessary academic 
function ? Have its Heads not themselves " desecrated" and com- 
pelled all others "to be parties to the desecration of what they 
hold [or ought to hold] to be most sacred, and to the destruction 
of what they deem [or ought to deem] most valuable in this life, 
because it is connected with the interests of the life to come," — 
their solemn oaths ? — They have equally done the latter. As we 
formerly observed, — and that previous to the agitation of the 
present question of the Dissenters' claim, — the Heads have viola- 
ted not only their moral and religious obligations to the University 
and the country, but in a particular manner their duty to the 
Church of England. By law, Oxford is not now unconditionally 
an establishment for the benefit of the English nation ; it has been 
for centuries an establishment only for the benefit of those in com- 
munity with the English Church. But the heads well knew, that 
the man will subscribe thirty-nine articles which he cannot believe, 
who swears to do and to have done a hundred articles which he 
cannot, or does not, perform. In this respect, private usurpation 
was for once more (perversely) liberal than public law. Under 
the illegal system, Oxford has virtually ceased to be the seminary 
of a particular sect ; its governors impartially excluding all reli- 
gionists or none. ]S T or is this all. The natural tendency of the 



522 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL). 

academical ordeal was to sear the conscience of the patient to 
every pious scruple; and the example of " the accursed thing" 
committed and enforced by " the priests in the high places," 
extended its pernicious influence from the Universities, through- 
out the land. England became the country in Europe proverbial 
for a disregard of oaths ; and the English Church, in particular, 
was abandoned, as a peculiar prey, to the cupidity of men allured 
by its endowments, and educated to a contempt of all religious 
tests.* 

We are thus convinced that the collegial interest in Oxford have 
scruples, few and lightly overcome, to the admission of Dissenters, 
viewed as a measure per se. The consequences of that measure 
alone affright them.— In the first place, the Heads could not expect 
to find in the religionists of other sects, patients equally submissive 
in swallowing their catholicon of false swearing as members of the 
church in which they themselves stand high in station and autho- 
rity ; and any controversy on this point would inevitably determine 
a public inquiry into their stewardship, which they might be con- 
scious it could not endure. Farewell then to the suspension of the 
University, and the usurpation of Tuition by the college Fellows. 
In the second place, an increased resort to the University would 
necessarily occasion an increase in the number of privileged 
houses ; and consequently either divide the unconstitutional autho- 
rity of the Heads, or (what is more probable) accelerate its end. 
The collegial interest, from sordid motives, is thus naturally oppo- 
sed to the admission of the Dissenters ; but if that admission 
cannot be avoided, the same sordid motives will influence their 
conduct under that alternative. Be sure, there will be no strike, 
for conscience sake, of the Fellow-Tutors, and the college Heads, 
as threatened by the Bishop of Exeter and Sir Robert Inglis. 
The interlopers will be found to stick to their job and wages, till 
turned out to make room for the regular workmen they have 



* [A signal proof of the accuracy of this deduction was manifested in 

Oxford, not long after the publication of this paper. I refer to the doctrine 
there promulgated touching the subscription of religious articles in a non- 
natural sense. This doctrine professedly holds, that such articles need not 
be believed by the subscriber, as intended by the imposer o\' the obligation, 
but may be taken in any meaning in which he. the subscriber, may choose to 
understand them. c ' Non-natural subscription" is, indeed, the natural result 
of the illegal system, BO long tolerated in the English Universities; but I 
had hardly expected that this result would be thus openh avowed ] 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 523 

illegally expelled. In fact, the Heads have already left their two 
parliamentary champions in the lurch. We showed, in our last 
Number, how admission into an English University did not con- 
stitutionally depend on admission into a College ; and thus obvi- 
ated all rational objection to the Dissenters' claim. But as the 
restoration of the University and Halls was of more immediate 
danger to their interest than the admission of Dissenters to the 
Colleges, (the latter being mainly opposed only as a mean towards 
the former) ; and as the possibility of absolute exclusion, under 
circumstances, could no longer be expected ; the Heads, throwing 
to the winds every dread vaticination of their parliamentary 
organs, prudently determined to choose of two evils the least, and 
had actually agreed to propose in Convocation a repeal of the 
Academic Test. But lest it might ever possibly be imagined 
that this change of measures was determined by any new light 
thrown upon their duty, it curiously happened, that hardly had 
the project of repeal been by them resolved on, than the reform- 
ing Whigs were dismissed, and the Tory conservatives recalled 
to power. Forthwith, their resolution was rescinded ! 

But to return : — Will Dr Philpotts and Sir Robert Inglis con- 
scientiously deny, that a public trust was confided to the Oxford 
Heads, and that this trust has been by them betrayed ? If they 
cannot, they must either desert their principles, or join with us in 
calling for a deprivation of these unfaithful stewards. 

II. The reasoning from the second place, — the Obligation of 
the Academic Oath, — is to the following purport : — All members 
of the English Universities are bound by the most solemn oaths 
to maintain and observe the academical statutes : — These statutes 
prohibit the admission of Dissenters; — Therefore, in the first 
place, the passing of the Dissenters' Bill in Parliament, by 
causing a connection between the law of the state and the law of 
the University, would constrain the administrators and teachers 
of Oxford and Cambridge, either to violate their spiritual obli- 
gations, or to sacrifice their temporal interests; while, in the 
second, members of either House of Parliament who are, or have 
been, members of either University, would, by supporting or not 
opposing the claim of the Dissenters, incur the guilt of perjury. 

This reasoning, though allowed to pass in Parliament, has every 
vice of which reasoning is capable. — It is, in the first place, harm- 
less to those against whom it is directed; and, in the second, fatal, 
not only to the special case in question, but to the general cause 



524 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

of those by whom it is employed. We shall consider it in this 
twofold relation : — 1°, As an argument against the Dissenters ; 2°, 
As an argument by the Collegial interest. 

1. As an Argument against the Dissenters. — The validity of 
this argument supposes the truth of one or other of two assump- 
tions, both of which are utterly, and even notoriously false. It 
supposes, either that the sovereign legislature has not the right of 
making and unmaking the statutes of the national schools, or that 
a competent authority having once imposed an oath to the obser- 
vance of certain laws, the same authority cannot afterwards relieve 
from that obligation, when it abrogates the very laws to which 
that oath is relative. Of these assumptions, the latter is suffi- 
ciently refuted by the very terms of its statement, and the former 
requires only a removal of the grossest ignorance to make its 
absurdity equally palpable. 

It will not be contended that the King, Lords, and Commons, 
cannot do that to which the King singly is competent. If, there- 
fore, it can be shown that the Crown, alone, has the right either 
of sole or paramount legislation in the English Universities, it will 
not be maintained that this right is null, when exercised by the 
Crown, plus the two Houses of Parliament. Again : it will not 
be pretended that Universities have in themselves any native 
right of legislation, or that they can exercise such right other- 
wise than as a power delegated to them for public purposes by 
the supreme authority in the state. But if the supreme authority 
can delegate, it can consequently perform a function ; and, there- 
fore, all academical legislation, however absolutely devolved, is of 
its very nature subordinate to, and controllable by, the authority 
on which it is dependent for existence. But, in regard to the 
English Universities, the case is far weaker ; there has, in fact, to 
them been either no delegation at all, or this delegation has been 
only partial and precarious. 

In regard to Cambridge, — and to the oaths taken in that Uni- 
versity in observance of its statutes, Sir Robert Inglis confines 
himself* — there can be no doubt or difficulty whatever. The 
Crown has there never delegated, except in mere matters of 
detail, the power of legislation to any academical hody. The 

* [Why has the Member tor Oxford confined himself to the University ol 
Cambridge* Perjnry can be rebutted, as it can be established, more easily 
and conclusively, where, as in Oxford, the Statutes have been fully and 
authoritatively published, than where. ELS in Cambridge, they have not.] 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 525 

whole organic laws of that University flow immediately from the 
King ; and the King may at any moment withdraw all or any of 
the statutes, and relieve from all or any of the oaths, which it 
has pleased him to impose. The Royal Statutes minutely deter- 
mine the academic constitution, the organization of teachers, the 
mode and the conditions of instruction and exercise ; while there 
is only permitted to the Chancellor and a majority of the Heads of 
Houses the interpretation of what in these statutes may be found 
doubtful or ambiguous* (Stat. Eliz. cap. 50) ; and to the Chancellor 
and whole University the privilege of ratifying new laws conducive 
to the welfare of the institution, but this only in so far as these 
Graces do not derogate from, nor prejudice, the statutes established 
by the Crown (Stat. Eliz. cap. 42). Not that the actual state of 
that University is legal, or the oaths taken by all for observance 
of the statutes are not there, as in Oxford, broken by all, for the 
private advantage of the academical rulers. But, speaking of 
Cambridge, as existing not in reality but in law : in that semi- 
nary, the Crown has only to remove the impediment which it 
originally placed to the admission of Dissenters ; and the Uni- 
versity will be at once restored to its natural state, of a national, 
of a European school. It may, however, be noticed, as character- 
istic of the opposition now made to the Dissenters, that the very 
men who, in Cambridge, coolly take and deliberately violate 
every solemn oath to the observance of the established statutes, 
when contrary to their petty interests, do, when these petty 
interests persuade, vociferate before God and man, that they are 
to be robbed either of their salvation or subsistence ; because, 
forsooth, perjury would be imposed on them by the non-enforce- 
ment of a non-existent law ! Strange, that the throats which thus 
pleasantly can bolt a camel, should be so painfully constricted 
at the prospective phantom of a gnat ! 

In Oxford, although the Crown has permitted to Convocation 
a greater measure of legislative power than in Cambridge to the 
Senate; it has done this only in conjunction with, and in subor- 
dination to, itself. The King has here always continued to exert, 
both the power of original legislation, and the power of con- 
trolling the acts of the academical body to which it has pleased 

* [" The benign interpretations" (to use Serjeant Miller's expression) of 
the Cambridge Heads, have, however, in the teeth of oath and statute, been 
perverted into an actual legislation. See above, p. 419, note.] 



520 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.-(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

him to depute the partial and subordinate exercise of this power. 
The deplorable ordinance by which the ancient and natural con- 
stitution of the University was subverted, and its efficiency there- 
after gradually annihilated, — (we mean the Caroline statute, which 
conferred on the Heads of Houses the guardianship of the old and 
the initiative of the new laws — i. e., abandoned the welfare of the 
national school to the perfidy of a private body incompetent to its 
maintenance, and directly interested in its ruin,) — is an example 
of a royal statute, which, we trust, will, before long, by another 
royal statute, be repealed. The history of the University does 
not afford a single instance of the subordinate legislature (the 
House of Convocation) venturing to reject a statute prescribed by 
the paramount lawgiver (the King) ; while all enactments of any 
general importance, as, for example, the ratification of the code 
of statutes, were not only rendered valid by the royal confirma- 
tion, but these, though formally originating in the University, 
were usually, in fact, enjoined to the academical legislature by 
the Sovereign. But not only does the academical legislature of 
Oxford enjoy no rights available against the state ; in point of 
fact, the body to which alone the legislative power was originally 
intrusted, does not now exist ; the delegation is consequently at 
an end. The country, the King, and the University confided the 
right of subordinate legislation in the national school of Oxford to 
a body of men notoriously qualified to this important function, by 
a certain known and statutory course of public instruction, exer- 
cise, and examination. That necessary, that privileged course of 
education is no longer given; with the qualifying condition, the 
qualified body is virtually at an end ; and, with the actual sus- 
pension of the University education, the right of University legis- 
lation ought likewise to be suspended. The pretended rights of 
that perjured interest which now usurps the place of the Uni- 
versity, and of the instruments through whom it ostensibly car- 
ries on the acts of what, in law and reason, no longer exists, are 
treated with too much deference, when treated with derision. 

Thus to the Crown alone, — ex abundatntia, to the Crown and 
the two Houses of Parliament in conjunction, does the supreme 
right belong of repealing, as of ratifying, the statutes of either 
University. What then becomes of the argument, that the 
repeal of the academic tests by King, Lords, and Commons, as it 
could not alter the academic statutes to which the members of 
the two Universities are sworn, would consequently reduce the 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 527 

academical authorities to the alternative of perjury or resigna- 
tion? 

2. As an argument by the Collegial interest. — But as the prin- 
ciple, (which no moral intelligence can dispute,) that the State 
should by no act occasion, countenance, or permit the crime of 
perjury among its subjects, is found wholly irrelevant, as applied 
by the advocates of the interloping interest in the Universities, 
against the Dissenters ; let us try how the same principle will 
work, when retorted against the very party in whose hands it has 
proved so ineffectual a weapon. 

In the first place, it will be admitted, that it is the common 
duty of every member of the national legislature to do all that in 
him lies to obviate the causes, and to quell the perpetration of 
so grievous a sin in any class or department of the community ; 
and that the obligation of this duty rises, in proportion as the 
atrocity of the crime, and its contagious virulence, are enhanced 
by the social rank and sacred character of the perjurers. But 
when a violation, the most aggravated, of the religious bond 
itself, is committed in the act of sacrificing the greatest of all 
public trusts on the altar of a private interest ; the sufferance of 
the perjury and malversation by the national legislature for one 
unnecessary moment after its exposure, becomes a reproach to 
every representative of the country who hesitates to raise his 
voice against the abomination. 

Of all nations in the world, past or present, Pagan or Chris- 
tian, the English is the one infamous for a contempt of religious 
obligations ; and if on any national wickedness the wrath of God 
is to be visited, we may soon have reason to lament with Jere- 
miah, that " because of swearing the land mourneth." Confining 
ourselves to Episcopal authorities : — Bishop Sanderson (in his 
Prelections on the Obligations of an Oath, delivered in the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, nearly two centuries ago,) warns his country- 
men, that " as the harvest of universal perjury is already white 
and ready for the sickle, so perfidious and profane a people ought 
to dread an utter extirpation at the hands of the divine justice ; " 
and he mainly attributes the grievous calamities of his generation to 
the endemic crimes of useless swearing and hypocritical perjury. 
Bishop Berkeley, in his Essay towards preventing the Ruin of 
Great Britain, near a century thereafter, enumerates, among the 
principal causes of our decline, false swearing : — " a national guilt 
which we possess in a very eminent degree ; there being no nation 



528 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS (SUPPLEMENTAL) 

under the sun, where solemn perjury is so common ; — in so much 
that men now-a-days break their fast and a customhouse oath 
with the same peace of mind." He then calls on the legislature 
to adopt means towards its prevention ; " for whatever measures 
are taken, so long as we lie under such a load of guilt as national 
perjury and national bribery, it is impossible we can prosper." 

But if the perjury of England stand pre-eminent in the world, 
the perjury of the English Universities, and of Oxford in particu- 
lar, stands pre-eminent in England. 

In Oxford, not only is the nation defrauded of nearly all the 
benefits, for the sake of which this the most important of all 
national corporations was specially organized and exclusively pri- 
vileged ; but the moral and religious wellbeing of the people sus- 
tains an injury, for which the sorry instruction still attempted in 
the place affords but a slender compensation. The exclusive pri- 
vileges which Oxford and Cambridge still retain, render them the 
necessary or the favoured portals through which, in England, the 
church and the professions must be entered ; and thus the Eng- 
lish Universities continue by these privileges to be thronged, when 
the conditions on which they were conceded are no longer ful- 
filled. Compared with Oxford as it is, there is not a European 
University, out of England, where the circle of academical instruc- 
tion attempted is so small ; and where the little taught is (in gene- 
ral) taught by so inadequate a teacher. But if the youth of 
England can, in Oxford, learn less of speculative knowledge than 
in any other Christian university, they have, however, here a 
school of practical morality and religion, such as no Christian 
university, out of England, is competent to supply. Oxford is 
now a national school of perjury. The Intrant is made to swear 
that he will do, what he subsequently finds he is not allowed to 
perforin. The Candidate for a degree swears that he has done, 
what he has been unable to attempt; and perjures himself, by 
accepting, from a perjured Congregation, an illegal dispensation 
of performances indispensable bylaw. The Professor swears to 
lecture as the statutes prescribe, and he does not. The reverend 
Heads of Houses, the academical executive, swear to see that the 
laws remain inviolate, and the laws are violated under their 
sanction ; they swear to be vigilant for the improvement of the 
University, and in their hands the University is extinguished ; 
they swear to prevent all false oaths, and, for their own ends, 
they deliberately incur the guilt of perjury themselves, and 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 529 

anxiously perpetuate the universal perjury of all under their 
control. The academic youth have thus the benefit of early prac- 
tice and of high example. They here behold at what account 
religious obligations are held by the very guardians of the sanc- 
tuary ; and how lightly their spiritual guides sacrifice to temporal 
advantage their own eternal interests, and those of all confided to 
their care. Is it marvellous that England is a by-word among 
the nations, when the fountains of English morality and religion 
are thus poisoned at their source ? How long is this to be 
endured ? 

But, in the second place, it is not only the common duty of 
every national representative, to see that no perjury be tolerated 
in any quarter, and least of all, in the very well-springs of pub- 
lic religion and morality, the privileged national schools; it is 
in a still higher degree, the especial duty of those members of 
the Legislature, who are also members of either University, to 
take care that every thing be done by Parliament towards 
upholding the statutes of these establishments, which they them- 
selves have solemnly sworn to observe. On this ground, Sir 
Robert Inglis called, in the most emphatic language, on those 
members of the House of Commons who had taken the academic 
oaths, to oppose, on the alternative of perjury, the passing of 
the Dissenters' Bill ; and this on the hypothesis, that by no act 
of the national Legislature could a University statute be repealed, 
and those relieved of their obligation who had sworn to its 
observance. We have already shown, that such an hypothesis 
is null ; and shall not attribute to Sir Robert the absurdity 
of holding, that oaths to obey a code of laws preclude the 
swearer from ever co-operating towards its improvement, by the 
modification or repeal of inexpedient enactments. — But if ineffec- 
tual against others, is Sir Robert's argument inconclusive against 
himself? He certainly challenges the retort. " I know," he 
says, " how unpopular the practice is in this House of ever refer- 
ring to the oaths which any honourable member has taken, but I 
will not shrink from that duty ;" and after adjuring them by their 
religious obligations, he assures his opponents " that I do not 
quote these oaths in any other spirit than that in which I would 
wish them to address me, if they believed that on any occasion I 
was incurring the risk of violating any such engagement." We 
shall put him to the test. 

Sir Robert has solemnly made oath in Oxford, once at matri- 

2l 



530 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

culation, and thrice at least at the various steps of graduation, " ad 
observandum omnia statuta, privilegia, consuetudines et libertates 
hujns Universitatis ;" and this oath he himself explains as obli- 
gating, not merely to a passive compliance with the statutory 
enactments, but to an active maintenance of their authority. H It 
binds," he says, " the party to maintain, not only the honour 
and dignity of the University, but even the statutes and ordi- 
nances." 

Now, Sir Robert is far more than a man of sense and honour ; 
yet as a mere man of sense and honour, and referring him for 
proof to our two articles on the English Universities, [Nos. iv. v.] 
we know and assert that he cannot, and will not deny, the follow- 
ing propositions : — 1°, That Oxford de facto, and Oxford dejure, 
are fundamentally different — nay, diametrically opposite. 2°, 
That all members of the University are sworn to the observance 
of the statutes thus violated and reversed. 3°, That those pro- 
ceeding to a degree without fulfilling all indispensable conditions, 
are declared perjured by statute, and no graduate now fulfils even 
the most important of these. 4°, That the Heads of Houses arc 
appointed to watch over the faithful observance of the statutes, 
and " decreed guilty of violated trust and perjury, if by their 
negligence or sloth any statute whatever be allowed to fall into 
desuetude," and through them every fundamental statute is sus- 
pended. 5°, That the Heads of Houses possess the initiative of 
every legislative enactment, and have yet neither brought, nor 
allowed to be brought, into Convocation, any measure tending to 
put an end to this state of illegality and universal perjury. — 
These facts (of which we have fully explained the how and why) 
Sir Robert Inglis will not, we are assured, as an honourable, not 
to say religious, man, deny ; for disprove them, we know, he can- 
not. We call on him, therefore, to fulfil his professions — " to 
uphold the Universities, and maintain their Statutes, as bound in 
the strongest manner by solemn oaths." " We ask" (his own 
words) " the honourable member to consider the nature of the 
oath which he so solemnly took. If there be faith in man, — if 
there be any use in religious instruction," any confidence in reli- 
gious profession, we conjure the representative o£ Oxford Uni- 
versity to lend the valuable aid of his character and talents in 
restoring that venerable seminary to a state of law and useful- 
ness, — to raise it at least from religious opprobrium to religious 
respectability. 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 531 

In like manner, and on the same hypothesis, — if the Bishop of 
Exeter would not prove a traitor to his sacred character, — if, as 
he says, he would " keep inviolate his academic oath," and not 
" become a party to the desecration of what he holds to be most 
sacred, and to the destruction of what he deems to be most valu- 
able in this life, because it is connected with the interests of the 
life to come," he will actively co-operate to the same hallowed 
end. 

But there is another and a more important ally who is bound 
by the most transcendent duty to lend his aid to the cause, — we 
mean the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Duke of 
Wellington. On his installation in that distinguished office, he 
made public and solemn oath to " defend and to keep entire (tueri 
et conservare) all and each of the statutes, liberties, customs, rights, 
and privileges of that University without partiality, well, and 
faithfully, to the best of his ability, and in so far as they should 
be brought to his knowledge" The Chancellor is the supreme 
magistrate of the public corporation of the University ; not of 
the private corporations of the colleges. His oath binds him to 
maintain the legal integrity of the University, and University 
alone ; he is clothed with power to prevent the breach or frustra- 
tion of any of its statutes ; which, if he knowingly permit, he is 
proclaimed by academic law " a perjured violator of his trust," 
and the pedestal of his dignity is converted into the pillory of his 
shame. But we have better hopes of the Duke of Wellington. 
He is not the man to compromise the interests of his glory to the 
paltry ends of any ; nor will he allow himself, we are assured, to 
be played as their puppet — their dme damnee — by such a body 
as the Oxford Heads. His speeches on the Dissenters' Admission 
Bill show him to have been grossly misled in regard to the nature 
of the academic oath ; but his error was then excusable. It is, 
however, his duty not to remain obstinate in ignorance. This 
excuse may have been competent to former Chancellors ; it is not 
to the present ; and let him study the subject for himself, or let 
him obtain the opinion of any respectable lawyer, and, sure we are, 
the present Chancellor of the University of Oxford will not be on 
the list of its perjured betrayers. 

But, we have heard it said, that, admitting the truth of our 
allegations, it is for the interest of religion to cloak the offences 
of its ministers, whilst the terms, " perjured violators of their 
trust," &c., though appropriate to the offence, and not unsuitable 



532 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

to ordinary offenders, are, at the best, harsh and unseemly when 
applied to a class of dignified divines. To this, we answer : — 

In the first place, these, the severest epithets we use, are those 
of the Statutes themselves, which confer upon the Heads of Houses 
a public authority to abuse ; and are by them prospectively 
affixed to the very lowest degree of that abuse, of which we have 
been obliged to characterise the very highest. The statutes 
apply them to the only breach of trust which the legislature 
contemplated as possible, the less careful enforcement of some 
unessential enactment ; we, to the deliberate and interested frus- 
tration of every fundamental law. In fact, if the thing is to be 
said at all, unless 

" Oaths are but words, and words but wind," 
it can be said in no other, in no milder terms. 

In the second place, it is blasphemous to hold that religion is 
to be promoted by veiling the vices of its ministers ; and foolish 
not to see that these vices are directly fostered by concealment 
and toleration. 

In the third place, so far is the sacred profession of the offen- 
ders from claiming for them a more lenient handling of their 
offence, it imperiously calls down upon their heads only a severer 
castigation. The holier the character of the criminal, the more 
heinous the aggravation of the crime. The lesion of moral and 
religious principle in the delinquent himself, and the baneful 
influence of his example on society, are in the present instance 
carried to their climax by the very circumstance that the " per- 
jured violators of their trust" had clothed themselves with the 
character of religious teachers ; and in virtue of that character 
alone were enabled to manifest to the world a detestable proof of 
how diametrically opposite might be the practice and the precept 
of a priesthood. It is not that one man forswears himself in a 
smock frock, another in a cassock and lawn sleeves. — it is not 
that an illiterate layman commits in ignorance a single act, and 
a graduated churchman perpetrates half a lifetime of perjury, 
with full consciousness of the transgression and its atrocity, — it 
is not that the former gains a dinner and contempt, by cheating 
government of a few pounds, the latter wealth and considera- 
tion by violating his public trust, and defrauding the church, the 
professions, the country, of their education. — it is not that the 
one offender may grace the pillory, the other the pulpit and the 
House of Peers; — these are not surely circumstances that can 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 533 

reverse the real magnitude of the two crimes, either in the esti* 
mation of God, or in the eyes of reasonable men. Why, then, 
repress the moral indignation that such delinquency arouses? 
Why stifle the expression in which that indignation clothes itself? 
But though there be no call for such restraint, we have imposed 
it. We have spoken plainly, as in duty bound, but without exag- 
geration as without reserve. 

" Dicenda pictis res phaleris sine, 
Et absque palpo. Discite strenuum 
Audire Verum. Me sciente 
Fabula non peragetur ulla. 

" Non est meum descendere ad oscula 
Impura Famae et fingere bracteas ; 
Larvisque luctari superbis, 
Ant nimias acuisse laudeis." 

Nor do we hazard our imputations, if unfounded, with impunity. 
We do not venture an attack, either agreeable in itself, or where 
defeat would be only fatal to the defender. We deeply feel, that 
the accusation of a betrayal of trust, self-seeking and perjury, to 
whomsoever applied, is of the most odious complexion ; and that 
the accuser, if he fail in establishing his proof, receives, and ought 
to receive, from public indignation, an almost equal measure of 
disgrace with that reserved for the accused, if unable to repel the 
charge. But when this charge is preferred against a body of men, 
the presumption of whose integrity is founded on their sacred 
character as clergymen, on their hallowed obligations as the 
guides, patterns, instructors of youth, and on their elevated sta- 
tion as administrators of the once most venerable school of religion, 
literature and science in the world ; what must be our conviction 
of its importance, of its truth and evidence, when we have not 
been deterred from the painful duty of such an accusation, by the 
dread of so tremendous a recoil ! 

And in reference to the actual Heads, it is now nearly four 
years since we first exposed the fact and the illegality of the pre- 
sent suspension of the University, with the treason and perjury 
through which that suspension was effected, and is maintained. 
In our exposition we were, however, anxious to spare, as far as 
possible, the living guardians of the University and its laws, and 
to attribute rather to an extreme, an incredible, ignorance of their 
duty, what would otherwise resolve into a conscious outrage of the 
most sacred obligations. But since that period the benefit of this 



534 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES & DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

excuse has been withdrawn. The Heads cannot invalidate the 
truth of our statements or the necessity of our inferences ; they 
have, therefore, in continuing knowingly, and without necessity, 
to hold on their former lawless course, overtly renounced the plea 
of ignorance and bona fides, and thus authorised every executioner 
of public justice to stamp the mark, wherewith the laws, by which 
they are constituted and under which they act, decree them as a 
body — as a body, to be branded.* 

* [On the false swearing practised and imposed in Oxford and Cambridge. 
I may refer, (besides Dr Peacock's Observations, ch. ii.,) to Mr F. W. New- 
man's edifying Note 99, appended to the translation (from another hand) of 
"The English Universities," by Professor Huber of Marburg, published in 
the year 1843. The annotation, here as in many other places, justly bristles 
against the text. Indeed, with reference to the original, I may remark, that 
the work was hardly worthy of a version, replete as it is with erroneous 
statements, in consequence, principally, of the author's want, not only of per- 
sonal experience, but of the most indispensable sources of special information, 
besides his deficient acquaintance with academical history in general. He 
was confessedly without the great work on the subject, Wood's " History 
and Antiquities of the University of Oxford," &c, possessing only that 
author's mutilated " Historia et Antiquitates," &c. ; nor does he seem even 
to have had access to the " Corpus Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis." 
Dipping merely into the work, among other mistakes : — in Oxford, Huber 
confounds Schools and Halls, and knows nothing of " The Street" which, 
however, was even more celebrated in that University than in Paris and 
Louvain (§ 227) ; he puzzles himself about the difference of Congregation 
and Convocation, or the Great Congregation, (§ 230, note 56) ; he wholly mis- 
takes the office and constitution of the Black Congregation, (§ 257, notes 72. 
80) ; he misrepresents the age of admission into the University, and the 
statutory commencement of attendauce on the statutory public courses 
(§§ 299, 301, note 74) ; &c. &c. 

Since the above was written, I have seen the " Oxford University Statutes, 
translated by G. R. M. Ward, Esq. M.A., Late Fellow of Trinity College, 
and Deputy High Steward of the University of Oxford;*' 1845. I am 
happy to find, that all the most important of my statements in regard to the 
University of Oxford are confirmed by the high official authority of Mr 
Ward ; and not one of them gainsaid. See his able and candid Preface, 
throughout.] 



VIII.-COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS 



(July, 1833.) 

1. Rapport sur Vetat de V Instruction Publique dans quelques pays 
de VAllemagne, et particular ement en Prusse. Par M. Victor 
Cousin, Conseiller d'Etat, Professeur de Philosophie, Membre 
de l'lnstitut et du Conseil Royal de ^Instruction Publique. 
8vo. JNouvelle edition. Paris; 1833. 

2. Expose des Motifs et Projet de Loi sur V Instruction primaire, 
presentes a la Chambre des Deputes, par M. le Ministre Secre- 
taire d'Etat de Hnstruction Publique. Seance du 2 Janvier, 
1833. 

The perusal of these documents has afforded us the highest 
gratification. We regard them as marking an epoch in the 
progress of national education, and directly conducive to results 
important not to France only, but to Europe. The institutions 
of Germany for public instruction we have long known and 
admired. We saw these institutions accomplishing their end to 
an extent and in a degree elsewhere unexampled ; and were con- 
vinced that if other nations attempted an improvement of their 
educational policy, this could only be accomplished rapidly, surely, 
and effectually, by adopting, as far as circumstances would per- 
mit, a system thus approved by an extensive experience, and the 
most memorable success. Our hopes, however, that the example 
of Germany could be turned to the advantage of England, are 
but recent. What could be expected from a Parliament, which, 
as it did not represent the general interests, was naturally hostile 

* [This article was, I believe, the first publication in this country, which 
called attention to what was doing in France, and had long been done in 
Germany, for the education of the people. We are indebted to Mrs Austin 
(among her other admirable translations) for versions of this and subsequent 
Reports by her celebrated friend M. Cousin, on national education.] 



536 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

to the general intelligence, of the people ? What could be 
expected from a Church which dreaded, in the diffusion of know- 
ledge, a reform of its own profitable abuses 1 But, though 
unaided by Church or State, the progress of popular intelligence, 
if slow and partial, was unremitted. The nation became at length 
conscious of its rights : the reign of partial interests was at an 
end. A measure of political power was bestowed upon the people, 
which demanded a still larger measure of knowledge; and the 
public welfare is henceforward directly interested in the moral 
and intellectual improvement of the great body of the nation. 
The education of the people, as an affair of public concernment, is 
thus, we think, determined. As the State can now only be admi- 
nistered for the benefit of all, Education, as the essential condition 
of the social and individual well-being of the people, cannot fail of 
commanding the immediate attention of the Legislature. Other- 
wise, indeed, the recent boon to the lower orders of political 
power, would be a worthless, perhaps a dangerous gift. Intelli- 
gence is the condition of freedom ; and unless an Education Bill 
extend to the enfranchised million an ability to exercise with judg- 
ment the rights the Reform Bill has conceded, the people must 
still, we fear, remain as they have been, the instruments, the 
dupes, the victims of presumptuous or unprincipled ambition. 
" A man," (says Dr Adam Smith, who in this only echoes other 
political philosophers,) — " a man, without the proper use of the 
intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible 
than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in 
a still more essential part of the character of human nature. 
Though the State was to derive no advantage from the instruction 
of the inferior ranks of the people, it would still deserve its atten- 
tion, that they should not be altogether uninstructed. The State, 
however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruc- 
tion. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to 
the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among igno- 
rant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. 
An instructed and intelligent people, besides, arc always more 
decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one.* They 

* The following paragraph we translate from an Austrian newspaper, 
(Observer,) of November, 1820. The writer is speaking of the disturbances 
which were then excited in many of the German towns against the Jews, 
but from which the provinces of Austria remained wholly exempt. " In all 
that regards the education of the lower orders o{ the people, through national 



NECESSITY FOR EDUCATING THE PEOPLE. 537 

feel themselves, each individually, more respectable, and more 
likely to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they 
are therefore more disposed to respect those superiors. They 
are more disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing 
through, the interested complaints of faction and sedition ; and 
they are, upon that account, less apt to be misled into any 
wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of Govern- 
ment. In free countries, where the safety of Government 
depends very much upon the favourable judgment which the 
people may form of its conduct, it must surely be of the highest 
importance that they should not be disposed to judge rashly 
or capriciously concerning it." (Wealth of Nations, B. v. c. 1. 
Art. 2.) 

Those (if there are now any) who argue against the expediency 
of universal education, are not deserving of an answer. — Those 
who, admitting this, maintain that the supply of education should, 
like other articles of industry, be left to follow the demand, for- 
get that here demand and supply are necessarily co-existent and 
co-extensive ; — that it is education which "creates the want which 
education only can satisfy. — Those again who, conceding all this, 
contend that the creation and supply of this demand should be 
abandoned by the State to private intelligence and philanthropy, 
are contradicted both by reasoning and fact. — This opinion, indeed, 
has been rarely advanced in all its comprehension. Even those 
(as Dr Adam Smith) who argue that the instruction of the higher 
orders should be left free to private competition, still admit that 
the interference of the State is necessary to ensure the education 
of the lower. All experience demonstrates this. No countries 

establishments of instruction, there is hardly a country in Europe that, in 
this respect, has the advantage of the Austrian States. The peasant in the 
country, the artisan in the town, must, throughout these dominions, have 
given due attendance at school. Without the certificate of education and 
adequate proficiency, no apprentice is declared free of his craft ; and without 
examination on the more important doctrines of religion, no marriage is 
solemnized. Even the military receive all competent instruction in the ele- 
mentary branches of knowledge, through masters who, for this purpose, are 
trained to the business of teaching in the normal schools. But in proportion 
as education is diffused, is the possibility diminished of the outbreaking^ of a 
rude ferocity ; the more universal the instruction of the lower orders, the 
more harmless becomes the influence which the ill- educated can exert upon 
the sound judgment of those who thus virtually cease to be any longer a part 
of the populace." 



538 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

present a more remarkable contrast in this respect than England 
and Germany. In the former, the State has done nothing for the 
education of the people, and private benevolence more than has 
been attempted elsewhere ; in the latter, the Government has 
done every thing, and left to private benevolence almost nothing 
to effect. The English people are, however, the lowest, the Ger- 
man people the highest, in the scale of knowledge. All that 
Scotland enjoys of popular education above the other kingdoms 
of the British Empire, she owes to the State ; and among the 
principalities of Germany, from Prussia down to Hesse-Cassel, 
education is uniformly found to prosper exactly in proportion to 
the extent of interference, and to the unremitted watchfulness of 
Government. The general conclusion against the expediency of 
all public regulation of the higher instruction, is wholly drawn 
from particular instances of this regulation having been inexpe- 
diently applied. Even of these, the greater number are cases in 
which the State, having once conceded exclusive privileges under 
well-considered laws, never afterwards interposed to see that these 
laws were duly executed, and from time to time reformed, in 
accommodation to a change of circumstances. The English Uni- 
versities, it is admitted, do not, as actually administered, merit 
their monopoly. But, from this example, we would not conclude, 
with Smith, that all privileged seminaries are detrimental. On 
the contrary, by showing that in Oxford and Cambridge the sta- 
tutory constitution has been silently subverted, we should argue 
that their corruption does not originate in the law, but in its vio- 
lation ; and from the fact that, while now abandoned by the State 
to private abuse, they accomplish nothing in proportion to their 
mighty means, we should only maintain more strongly the neces- 
sity of public regulation and superintendence to enable them to 
accomplish every thing. The interference of the Government may 
sometimes, Ave acknowledge, be directly detrimental ; and indi- 
rectly detrimental, we hold that it will always be, unless constant 
and systematic. The State may wisely establish, protect, and 
regulate ; but unless it continue a watchful inspection, the pro- 
tected establishment will soon degenerate into a public nuisance — 
a monopoly for merely private advantage. The experience of the 
last half century in Germany, has indeed completely set at rest 
the question. For thirty years, no German has been found to 
maintain the doctrine of Smith. In their generous rivalry, the 
Governments of that country have practically shewn what a bene- 



NECESSITY FOR EDUCATING THE PEOPLE. 539 

volent and prudent policy could effect for the university as for 
the school ; and knowing what they have done, who is there now r 
to maintain, — that for Education as for Trade, the State can pre- 
vent evil, but cannot originate good ? 

There are two countries in Europe which have excited the 
special wonder and commiseration of the honest Germans ; — won- 
der at the neglect of the government, — commiseration for the 
ignorance of the people. These countries are France and Eng- 
land. The following is the last sample we have encountered of 
these feelings : — * 

" Things incredible in Chkistendom. 

" England, in which country alone there are annually executed 
more human beings than in several other countries taken together, 
suffers two millions of her people to walk about in utter igno- 
rance, and abandons education to speculation and chance as a 
matter of merely private concernment ; — we mean the elementary 
instruction of the lower orders, for learning there possesses as 
extensive, wealthy, noble, [and maladministered] establishments 
as are anywhere to be found upon the globe. According to the 
documents before us, it appears that out of a population of nine 
millions and a half, there are above two millions without schools 
for their children. In London, according to an accurate estimate, 
one-fourth of the inhabitants are thus destitute. No wonder 
assuredly that crime is rife ! — In France, likewise, of forty-four 
thousand communes, twenty-five thousand (more than a half) are 
without schools ; since the restoration of the King, above four 

hundred cloisters have been re-established ; but schools 

What a blessed contrast is presented to us by our German father- 
land!"* 

Of these two partners in disgrace, France, which, even after 
the decline of popular schools consequent on the first revolution, 
remained far ahead of England in the education of the lower 
orders, — France has been the first to throw off the national oppro- 
brium, and has made a glorious start in the career of improve- 
ment. The revolution of July gave the signal. Almost the first 
act of the liberated State was an attempt to meliorate the system 
of public education, of which the education of the people consti- 
tutes the foundation ; and the enterprise has been continued with 

* Literaturzeitung fuer Deutschlands Volksscliullehrer, 1824, Qu. 4. p. 40. 



540 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

a perseverance fully equal to its promptitude. To show how 
much has been accomplished in so short a period, we quote the 
concluding paragraph of M. Cousin's Expose. 

" In fact, gentlemen, experience is our guide. This alone have we been 
anxious to folloAv, and this alone have we constantly pursued. There is not 
in this law to be found a single hypothesis. The principles and the proce- 
dures there employed have been supplied to us by facts ; it does not embrace 
a single organic measure which has not been already successfully realized in 
practice. In the matter of public education, we are convinced, that it is of 
far greater importance to regularize and meliorate what exists, than to des- 
troy, in order to invent and renovate on the faith of hazardous theories. It 
has been by labouring in conformity to these maxims, but by labouring with- 
out intermission, that the present administration has been able to bestow on 
this important part of the public service a progressive movement so vigorous 
and regular. But we may affirm, without any exaggeration, that there has 
been more done for primary education by the Government of July, during 
the last two years, than by all the other Governments during the preceding 
forty. The first Revolution was prodigal in promises, but took no care of 
their fulfilment. The Empire exhausted its efforts in the regeneration of 
secondary instruction, and did nothing for the education of the people. The 
Restoration, until the year 1828, annually devoted 50,000 francs (£2083) to 
primary instruction. The Minister of 1828 obtained from the Chambers 
300,000 francs (£12,500). The Revolution of July has given us annually a 
million, f£43,330) ; that is, more in two, than the Restoration in fifteen 
years. Such were the means ; attend now to the results. You are aware, 
gentlemen, that primary instruction is wholly dependent on the primary 
normal schools. f Its progress is correspondent to that of these establish- 
ments. The Empire, under which the name of primary normal school was 
first pronounced, left but one. The Restoration added five or six. AYe, 
gentlemen, in two years, have not only perfected those previously existing, 
of which some were only in their infancy, but have established more than 
thirty, of which twenty are in full exercise — forming in each department a 
great focus of illumination for the people. Whilst Government was carry- 
ing roads through the departments of the West, we there disseminated 
schools : we were cautious in meddling with those dear to the habits of the 
country ; but have founded in the heart of Brittany the great normal school 
of Rennes, which will be soon productive, and surrounded it with similar 
establishments of different kinds — at Angers, at Nantes, at Poictiers. The 
South lias at present more than five great primary normal schools, of which 
some are already, and others will be soon, at work. In fine, gentlemen, 
we believe ourselves on the road to good. May your prudence appreciate 
ours ; may your confidence sustain and encourage as ; and the time is not 
distant when we shall be able to declare together— ministers, deputies, 
departments, communes — that Ave have accomplished, in so far as in us lay, 
the promises of the Revolution of July, and of the charter of 1880, in all 



t Seminaries for training primary schoolmasters. [A name now familiar.] 



M. COUSIN HIMSELF. 541 

that more immediately relates to the education and true happiness of the 
people."— (P. 17.) 

Such was the memorable progress made previous to the com- 
mencement of the present year, when the important Law on 
Primary Instruction was ratified. But this progress and this 
law were professedly the offspring of experience. Of what 
experience ? Not of the experience of France, — of the very 
country whose whole educational system stood in need of creation 
or reform, — but of that country whose institutions for instruction 
were, by all competent to an opinion, acknowledged to afford the 
highest model of perfection. In resolving to profit by the expe- 
rience of the German states, and in particular of Prussia, we can- 
not too highly applaud the wisdom of the French government. 
Nor could a wiser choice have been made of an individual to 
examine the nature of the pattern institutions, and to report in 
regard to the mode of carrying their accommodation into effect. 
M. Cousin, by whose counsel it is probable that the plan was ori- 
ginally recommended, was, in the summer of 1831, commissioned to 
proceed to Germany ; and his observations on the state of educa- 
tion in that country, transmitted from time to time to the Minister 
of Public Instruction, constitute the present Report. No one could 
certainly have been found better qualified to judge ; no one from 
whom there was less cause to apprehend a partial judgment. A pro- 
found and original thinker, a lucid and eloquent writer, a scholar 
equally at home in ancient and in modern learning, a philosopher su- 
perior to all prejudices of age or country, party or profession, and 
whose lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under every form of opinion, 
traces its unity even through the most hostile systems ; — M. Cousin 
was, from his universality both of thought and acquirement, the man 
in France able adequately to determine what a scheme of national 
education ought in theory to accomplish ; and from his familiarity 
with German literature and philosophy, prepared to appreciate in 
all its bearings what the German national education actually per- 
forms. Without wavering in our admiration of M. Cousin's cha- 
racter and genius, we freely expressed on a former occasion our 
dissent from certain principles of his philosophy ; and with the 
same sincerity, we now declare, that from the first page of his 
Report to the last, there is not a statement nor opinion of any 
moment in which we do not fully and cordially agree. This 
work, indeed, recommends itself as one of the most unbiassed 
wisdom. Once persecuted by the priests, M. Cousin now fear- 



542 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

lessly encounters the derision of another party, as the advocate of 
religious education ; nor does the memory of national calamity 
and of personal wrong withhold him from pronouncing the Prus- 
sian government to be the most enlightened in Europe. He 
makes no attempt to soothe the vanity of his countrymen at the 
expense of truth ; and his work is, throughout, a disinterested 
sacrifice of self to the importance of its subject. His ingenuity 
never tempts him into unnecessary speculation ; practice, already 
approved by its result, is alone anxiously proposed for imitation, — 
relative and gradual ; and the strongest metaphysician of France 
traces the failure of the educational laws of his country to their 
metaphysical character. The Report is precisely what it ought 
to be, — a work of details ; but of details so admirably arranged, 
that they converge naturally of themselves into general views ; 
while the reflections by which they are accompanied, though never 
superficial, are of such transparent evidence as to command instant 
and absolute assent. This is, indeed, shown in the result. The 
Report was published. In defiance of national self-love and the 
strongest national antipathies, it carried conviction throughout 
France : a bill framed by its author for primary education, and 
founded on its conclusions, was almost immediately passed into a 
law ; and M. Cousin himself, (now a peer of France,) appointed to 
watch over and direct its execution. Nor could the philosopher 
have been intrusted with a more congenial office ; for, in the lan- 
guage of his own Plato, — " Man cannot propose a higher and 
holier object for his study, than education, and all that appertains 
to education." And M. Cousin's exertions, we are confident, will 
be crowned with the success and honour to which they are so well 
entitled. The benefit of his legislation cannot, indeed, be limited 
to France : a great example has there been set, which must be 
elsewhere followed ; and other nations than his own will bless the 
philosopher for their intelligent existence. " Juventutcm recte 
formare," says Melanchthon, " paulo plus est quam expugnare 
Trojam ;" and to carry back the education of Prussia into 
France, affords a nobler (if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies 
of Austerlitz and Jena. 

The Report of M. Cousin consists of two parts. The former, 
extending to about one-fourth of the volume, contains a cursory 
view of German education from the elementary schools up to the 
universities, as observed during a day's stay at Frankfort, and a 
five days' journey through the states of Saxony. The latter is 



COUSIN'S REPORT. 543 

solely devoted to a detailed exposition of Prussian education, 
which the author enjoyed the most favourable opportunities of 
studying, in all its departments, during a month's residence at 
Berlin. This part is, however, not yet fully published. Of the 
four heads which M. Cousin promises to treat, (viz. 1. The general 
organization of public instruction ; 2. The primary instruction ; 
3. Instruction of the second degree, or the gymnasia; 4. The 
higher instruction, or the universities,) the two first alone appear. 
We anxiously hope that nothing may occur to prevent the speedy 
publication of the last two. If we found fault, indeed, with the 
Report at all, it would be, not for what it contains, but for what 
it does not. We certainly regret that it was impossible for M. 
Cousin to extend his observations to some other countries of Ger- 
many. Bavaria would have afforded an edifying field of study ; 
and the primary schools of Nassau are justly the theme of general 
admiration. In the present Article we must limit our considera- 
tion to the second Report ; and taking advantage of M. Cousin's 
labours, and with his principal authorities before us, we shall endea- 
vour to exhibit, in its more important features, a view of the 
organization of Primary Instruction in Prussia; reserving the 
higher and highest education — the Gymnasia and Universities — 
of Germany, for the subject of a future Article. 

Before entering on the matter of primary education, it is neces- 
sary to premise an account of the general organization of Public 
Instruction in Prussia. — The Ministry of Public Instruction and 
Worship there forms a distinct department of administration. It 
is composed of a minister and a council divided into three sec- 
tions, — for Worship, — for Education, — for Medicine ; each con- 
sisting of a certain number of Counsellors and a Director. Of 
the first, the counsellors are principally ecclesiastics ; and of the 
second, principally laymen. The mode in which the minister and 
his council govern all the branches of public instruction through- 
out the monarchy, is thus luminously explained by M. Cousin. 

" Prussia is divided into ten Provinces ; viz., East Prussia, West Prussia, 
Posen, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, Saxony, Westphalia, Cleves, and 
the Lower Rhine. 

" Each of these provinces is subdivided into Departments (Regierungs- 
bezirke) comprehending a territory more or less extensive. Each of these 
departments is divided into Circles, (Kreise,) less than our arrondissements, 
and larger than our cantons ; and each of these circles is again subdivided 
into Communes (Gemeinde). Each department has a kind of council of pre- 
fecture called the Recency, (Regierung,) which has its President, nearly cor- 



544 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

respondent to our prefect, with this difference, that the president of a Prus- 
sian Regency has much less power over his council than our prefect over his : 
for, in Prussia, all affairs belong to the regency, and are determined by the 
majority of voices. As each department has its president, so every province 
has its Supreme President (Oberpraesident). 

" All the degrees of public instruction are correlative to the different 
degrees of this administrative hierarchy. Almost every province has its 
university. East and West Prussia, with the Duchy of Posen, which are 
conterminous, have the University of Koenigsberg ; Pomerania, the Univer- 
sity of Greifswald ; Silesia, that of Breslau ; Saxony, that of Halle ; Bran- 
denburg, that of Berlin ; Westphalia, the imperfect University (called the 
Academy) of Munster ; the Rhenish provinces that of Bonn. Each of these 
Universities has authorities appointed by itself, under the superintendence 
of a Royal Commissioner, named by the Minister of Public Instruction, with 
whom he directly corresponds ; a functionary answering to the Curator of 
the older German Universities. This office is always intrusted to some per- 
son of consideration in the province : it is substantially an honorary appoint- 
ment ; but there is always attached to it a certain emolument, for it belongs 
to the spirit of the Prussian government to employ very feAv unpaid func- 
tionaries. It is of the nature of aristocratic governments to have many 
offices without salary, as is seen in England ; but such a system is unsuit- 
able to governments at once popular and monarchical, like Prussia and 
France ; and were it carried to any length in either country, nothing less 
would ensue than a change in the form of the government. It would be in 
vain to expect that gratuitous duties would be performed by all the citizens 
adequate to their discharge ; those of small fortunes would soon tire of them ; 
they would gradually be confided to those of large fortunes, who, at last 
would govern alone. In Prussia all functionaries are paid ; and as no office 
is obtained till after rigid examinations, all are enlightened ; and moreover, 
as they are taken from every class, they carry into the discharge of their 
duties the general spirit of the country, at the same time that they contract 
the habits of the government. Here is manifested the system of the Impe- 
rial government with us ; it is that of every popular monarchy. A Royal 
Commissioner has duties which he is compelled to fulfil ; whatever may be 
his consideration in other respects, in this he is a ministerial officer, account- 
able to the Minister. The Royal Commissioners are alone intermediate 
between the Universities and the Ministry. The Universities thus hold 
almost immediately of the Ministry. No provincial authority, civil or eccle- 
siastical, has the right of interfering in their affairs ; they belong only to the 
state ; this is their privilege and their guarantee. I will speak to you again 
in detail of their internal organization; it is enough, at present, to mark the 
relation which they hold to the central administration in the general eco- 
nomy. 

u If the Universities belong exclusively to the state, the same is not the 
case with the schools of secondary instruction. In Prussia these are con- 
sidered as in a great measure provincial. In every province of the monarchy, 
under the Supreme President of the province, there is an institution holding 
of the Ministry of Public Instruction, and in a certain sort representing it in 



PRUSSIAN REGULATION OF INSTRUCTION IN GENERAL. 545 

its internal organization ; this institution is called the Provincial Consistory 
(Provincial- Consistorium). As the Ministry is divided into three sections, 
in like manner the Provincial Consistory : the first, for ecclesiastical affairs, 
or Consistory properly so called (Consistorium) : the second, for public 
instruction, the School Board (Schul- Collegium) : the third, for matters rela- 
tive to public health, the Medical Board (Medicinal- Collegium). This Pro- 
vincial Consistory is salaried : all the members are nominated by the Mini- 
ster of Public Instruction and Worship ; but at its head, and at the head of 
its sections, stands the Supreme President of the Province, to whom exclu- 
sively belongs the duty of correspondence, and who in this capacity corres- 
ponds with the Minister of Public Instruction, who is not, however, his 
natural minister ; but in his quality of Supreme President, he corresponds 
with various ministers on matters relative to his province, although he him- 
self holds directly of the Minister of the Interior. This official correspon- 
dence of the President of the province with the Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion, is only formal, and for the sake of concentrating the provincial admini- 
stration. In reality, all authority is in the hands of the Consistory, of which 
each section deliberates separately, and decides on all subjects by a majority 
of voices. — I shall here speak only of that section which is occupied with 
public education, viz., the School- Board. 

" I must first call your attention to an essential difference between the 
character of the public instruction, in Prussia, and that which it presents in 
the other states of Germany through which I passed. In these, at the 
centre, under a director or a minister, stands a Consistory, in a great mea- 
sure ecclesiastical ; in Prussia, beside the minister, in place of a Consistory, 
there is a Council, divided into three parts, one of which only is clerical, 
whilst the other two are lay and scientific. This council has, therefore, no 
ecclesiastical character ; the sacerdotal spirit is here replaced by the spirit 
of the government ; the idea of the state predominant over all others. In 
like manner, in each province, if the composition of the Provincial Consis- 
tory be again too ecclesiastical, its separation into three sections, like the 
Ministry of Berlin, leaves to this body nothing clerical but the name. No 
doubt, the intimate relations of the School Board with the Consistory proper, 
and its peculiar duties, render it essentially religious : but it is principally 
composed of lay members, and completely free in its action. 

" Its special domain is secondary education, the Gymnasia, and those 
establishments intermediate between the schools of primary and secondary 
instruction, called Progymnasia and Superior Burgher Schools, (Progymnasien, 
hoehere Buergerschulen.) It is necessary to observe, that the seminaries for 
training teachers of the primary schools {Seminarien fuer Schullehrer,) our 
primary normal schools, are likewise within its province, and that in general 
it interposes on all the higher questions touching primary education. 

" Along with the School-Board, there is a Commission of Examination, 
(wissenschqftliche Pruefungs- Commission,) usually composed of the professors 
of the university belonging to the province. This commission has two 
objects : — 1. To examine the pupils of the gymnasia who are desirous of 
passing to the university, or to revise the examen ad hoc, which these young 
persons sometimes undergo at the gymnasium itself, (Abiturienten- Examen,) 
by a review of the minutes and documents of this trial, (it corresponds to 

2 M 



546 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

our examination for Bachelor of Letters, without which no matriculation is 
competent in the Faculties;) 2. To examine those who come forward as 
teachers in the gymnasia ; and here there are different examinations for the 
different gradations of instruction — one for masters of the lower classes, 
{Lehrer,) — another for masters of the higher classes, {Oberlehrer,) — a third, 
in fine, for rectors (correspondent to our provisors,) who are always intrusted 
with the more important instruction. The first examination for simple mas- 
ters {Lehrer) is the fundamental. The Commission of Examination is the 
board that connects the secondary instruction with the higher, as the School- 
Board connects the public instruction in the provinces with the central 
ministry of Berlin. 

" The following is, in few words, the mechanism of the administration of 
popular education : — 

" If the universities belong exclusively to the state, and the schools of 
secondary instruction to the province, those of primary instruction pertain 
principally to the department and to the commune. 

" Every commune ought to have a school, even by the law of the state ; 
the pastor of the place is the natural inspector of this school, along with a 
communal committee of administration and superintendence, called Schul- 
vorstand. 

" In urban communes, where there are several schools, and establishments 
for primary education of a higher pitch than the common country schools, 
the magistrates constitute, over the particular committees of the several 
schools, a superior committee, which superintends all these, and forms them 
into a harmonic system. This committee is named Schuldeputation, or 
Schulcommission. 

" There is, moreover, at the principal place of the circle {Kreis) another 
inspector, whose sphere comprehends all the schools of the circle, and who 
corresponds with the local inspectors and committees. This new inspector, 
whose jurisdiction is more extensive, is likewise almost always an ecclesias- 
tic. Among the Catholics it is the dean. He has the title of School- Inspec- 
tor of the Circle {Kreis- Schul- Inspector.) 

" Thus the two first degrees of authority in the organization of primary 
instruction are, in Prussia as in the whole of Germany, ecclesiastical ; but 
with these degrees the influence wholly terminates, and the administrative 
commences. The inspector of each circle corresponds with the regency of 
each department, through its president. This regency, or council of depart- 
ment, has within it departmental- counsellors {Regienuujsraethe) charged 
with different functions, and among others a special counsellor for the pri- 
mary schools, styled Schulrath ; a functionary, salaried like all his colleagues, 
and who forms the link of the public instruction, with the ordinary depart- 
mental administration, inasmuch as, on the one side, he is nominated on the 
presentation of the Minister of Public Instruction, and as, on the other, 
immediately on his appointment, he forms, in his quality o\' Schulrath, part 
of the council of regency, and thereby comes into connexion with the ^Mini- 
ster of the Interior. The Schulrath reports to the council, which deeides by 
a majority, lie thus inspects the schools, animates and maintains the seal 
of the Schidinspeetoren, of the Schuhorstaende, and of the schoolmasters ; the 
whole correspondence of the communal inspectors, .and of the superior inspec- 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 547 

tors, is addresssed to him ; and it is he who conducts all correspondence 
relative to the schools, in name of the regency and through the president, 
with the provincial consistories and the school-board, as well as with the 
Minister of Public Instruction : in a word, the Schulrath is the real director 
of primary education in each regency. 

" I do not here descend into any detail ; I am only desirous of making 
you aware of the general mechanism of public instruction in Prussia. In 
recapitulation : — Primary instruction is communal and departmental, and, at 
the same time, holds of the Minister of Public Instruction ; a double charac- 
ter, derived, in my opinion, from the very nature of things, which requires 
equally the intervention of local authorities, and that of a higher hand, to 
vivify and animate the whole. This double character is represented in the 
Schulrath, who makes part of the Council of Department, and belongs at 
once to the ministry of the Interior, and to that of Public Instruction. 
Viewed on another side, all secondary instruction is dependent on the School 
Board, which makes part of the Provincial Consistory, and is nominated by 
the Minister of Public Instruction. All higher education, that of the univer- 
sities, depends on the Royal Commissioner, who acts under the immediate 
authority of the miuister. Nothing thus escapes the ministerial agency ; and 
at the same time, every sphere of public instruction has in itself a sufficient 
liberty of operation. The universities elect their authorities. The School- 
Board proposes and superintends the professors of the gymnasia, and is 
informed on all the matters of any consequence regarding primary instruction. 
The Schulrath, with the Council of Regency, or rather the council of regency 
on the report of the Schulrath, and after considering the correspondence of 
the inspectors and the committees, decides the greater part of the affairs 
of the inferior instruction. The minister, without involving himself in 
the endless details of popular education, makes himself master of the 
results, directs the whole by instructions emanating from the centre, and 
extending to every quarter the national unity. He does not continually 
intermeddle with the concerns of secondary instruction ; but nothing is done 
without his confirmation, and he proceeds always on accurate and complete 
reports. It is the same with the universities ; they govern themselves, but 
according to the laws which they receive. The professors elect their Deans 
and their Rectors ; but they themselves are appointed by the minister. In 
the last analysis, the aim of the whole organization of public instruction in 
Prussia is to leave details to the local authorities, and to reserve to the 
minister and his council the direction and impulsion of the whole." 

The state of primary education in Prussia, M. Cousin exhibits 
under the two heads of the Law and its Results, i. e. : — 

I. The organization of primary instruction, and the legislative 
enactments by which it is governed ; and, 

IT. What these legislative enactments have accomplished, or the 
statistics of primary instruction. 

We must limit our consideration to the former head alone ; 
where M. Cousin gives in his own arrangement that portion of 
the law of 1819 — the educational digest of Prussia — which relates 



54S COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

to the primary instruction. We shall endeavour to afford a some- 
what detailed view of this important section of the Report. The 
more interesting provisions of the law we shall give at large ; the 
others abbreviate or omit. 

I. — Duty of Parents to send their Children to School. 
(Schulpflichtigkeit.) 

In Prussia, as in the other states of Germany, this duty has 
been long enforced by law. The only title of exemption is the 
proof that a competent education is furnished to the child in pri- 
vate. The obligation commences at the end of the fifth, (though 
not strictly enforced till the beginning of the seventh,) and termi- 
nates at the conclusion of the fourteenth year. None are admitted 
or dismissed from school before these ages, unless on examination, 
and by special permission of the committee of superintendence. 
During this interval, no child can remain away from school unless 
for sufficient reasons, and by permission of the civil and ecclesias- 
tical authority ; and a regular census, at Easter and Michaelmas, 
is taken by the committees and municipal authorities, of all the 
children competent to school. Parents, tutors, and masters of 
apprentices, are bound to see that due attendance is given by the 
children under their care ; and the schoolmasters must, in a pre- 
scribed form, keep lists of attendance, to be delivered every fort- 
night to the committees of superintendence. Not wholly to 
deprive parents, &c, of the labours of their children, the school 
hours are so arranged that a certain time each day is left free 
for their employment at home. Do parents, &c, neglect their 
responsibility in sending their children punctually to school ? — 
counsel, remonstrance, punishments, always rising in severity, are 
applied ; and if every means be ineffectual, a special tutor or 
co-tutor is assigned to watch over the education of the children. 
Jewish parents who thus offend, are deprived of their civil privi- 
leges. To the same end, the clergy, Protestant and Catholic, are 
enjoined to use their influence, to the extent and in the manner 
they may judge expedient ; their sermons, on the opening of the 
schools, ought to inculcate the duty of parents to afford their 
children education, and to watch over their regular attendance, 
and may even contain allusion to the most flagrant examples of 
these obligations neglected ; and they shall not admit any child 
to the conferences previous to confirmation and communion, with- 
out production of the certificates of education. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 54D 

In the case of necessitous parents, means are to be taken to 
enable them to send their children to school, by supplying them 
with clothing, books, and other materials of instruction. 

II. — Duty of each Commune (Gemeinde*) to maintain, at its 
expense, a Primary School, 

Every commune, however small, must maintain an elementary 
school, complete or incomplete ; that is to say, either fulfilling the 
whole complement of instruction prescribed by law, or its most 
essential parts. Every town must support burgher schools, one 
or more, according to its population. Petty towns of less than 
fifteen hundred inhabitants, and inadequate to the expense of a 
burgher school, are bound to have at least complete elementary 
schools. In case a town cannot maintain separately, and in dif- 
ferent tenements, an elementary and a burgher school, it is per- 
mitted to employ the lower classes of the burgher as an elementary 
school ; in like manner, but only in case of manifest necessity, it 
is allowed to use, as a burgher school, the lower classes of the 
gymnasium. In towns, the Jews may establish schools at their 
own expense, if organized, superintended, and administered by 
them in conformity to the legal provisions ; they are likewise 
permitted to send their children to the Christian schools, but can 
have no share in their administration.! 

The first concern is to provide the elementary schools required 
in the country. When possible, incomplete schools are every 
where to be changed into complete ; and this is imperative where 
two masters are required. To this end, the inhabitants of every 
rural commune are, under the direction of the public authori- 
ties, constituted into a Country-school-union (Landschulverein). 
This union is composed of all landed proprietors with or without 
children, and of all fathers of families domiciled within the ter- 
ritory of the commune, with or without local property. Every 

* Gemeinde, commune, may, with some inaccuracy, be translated parish. 

f From the statistical information subsequently given by our author, it 
appears that, in 1825, Prussia contained of inhabitants 12,256,725 ; — of pub- 
lic elementary schools for both sexes, 20,887 ; — of public burgher or middle 
schools for boys, 458 ; for girls, 278 ; in all, 21,623 schools for primary edu- 
cation. In these were employed 22,261 masters ; 701 mistresses; and 2,024 
under masters and under mistresses ; primary teachers, in all 25,000 ; — afford- 
ing public primary instruction to 871,246 boys, 792,972 girls; in all, to 
1,664,218 children. Since that, the improvement has been rapid. 



550 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

village, with the adjacent farms, should have its school-union 
and its school ; but in exception to this rule, but only as a tem- 
porary arrangement, two or more villages may unite : if, firstly, 
one commune be too poor to provide a school ; if, secondly, none 
of the associated villages be distant from the common school 
more than two (English) miles in champaign, and one mile in 
hilly districts ; if, thirdly, there be no intervening swamps or 
rivers at any season difficult of passage; and, fourthly, if the 
whole children do not exceed a hundred. If a village, by reason 
of population or difference of religion, has already two schools 
for which it can provide, these are not to be united ; especially 
if they belong to different persuasions. Circumstances per- 
mitting, separate schools are to be encouraged. Mere differ- 
ence of religion should form no obstacle to the formation of a 
school union ; but, in forming such an association of Catholics 
and Protestants, regard must be had to the numerical propor- 
tion of the inhabitants of each persuasion. The principal master 
should profess the faith of the majority, the subordinate master 
that of the minority.* Jews enjoy the advantages, but are not 
permitted to interfere in the administration of these schools. If, 
in certain situations, the junction of schools belonging to differ- 
ent persuasions be found expedient, this must take place by con- 
sent of the two parties. Care must, however, be taken, in case 
of junction, that each sect has the means necessary for the reli- 
gious education of its scholars. That neither party may have 
cause of anxiety, and that whatever it contributes to the partner- 
ship may be secured in case of separation, the respective rights 

* This liberality is general throughout Germany. If we are ever to enjoy 
the blessings of a national education in the United Kingdom, the same prin- 
ciple must be universally applied. An established church becomes a nui- 
sance, when (as hitherto in England and Ireland) it interposes an obstacle 
to the universal diffusion of religion and intelligence. We trust that the 
boon conceded by our late monarch to his German dominions, may bo 
extended, under his successor, to the British Empire. By ordinance of 
George IV. dated Carlton House, 25th June 1822, in reference to education 
in the county of Lingen, it is decreed, (although the Protestant be the esta- 
blished religion,) that in all places where the majority of the inhabitants 
are Catholic, the principal schoolmaster shall be of their persuasion. The 
Lutheran schools to be under inspection of the Superintendent ; the Catholic 
under that of the Arehpriest : — both bound to visit the schools regularly, to 
examine schoolmaster and scholar, and to report to their respective consis- 
tories. {Wcingarfs Journal, 1822. Heft. 4. p. 21.) 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 551 

of the parties shall be articulately set forth, and ratified in a legal 
document. 

The law having ordained the universal establishment of pri- 
mary schools., goes on to provide for their support. This support 
consists in securing : 1. A suitable salary for the schoolmasters 
and schoolmistresses, and a retiring allowance when unable to 
discharge their functions ; 2. A schoolhouse, with appertainances, 
well laid out, maintained in good order, and properly heated ; 
3. The furniture, books, pictures, instruments, and means requi- 
site for instruction and exercise ; 4. The aid to be given to needy 
scholars. — The first provision is solemnly recognised as of all 
the most important. The local authorities are enjoined to raise 
the schoolmaster's salary as high as possible. Though a general 
rule rating the amount of emolument necessarily accruing to the 
office cannot be established for the whole monarchy, a minimum, 
relative to the prosperity of each province, is to be fixed, and 
from time to time reviewed, by the provincial consistories. — In 
regard to the second, — schoolhouses are to be in a healthy situa- 
tion, of sufficient size, well aired, &c. ; hereafter, all to be built 
and repaired in conformity to general models. Attached, must 
be a garden of suitable size, &c, and applicable to the instruc- 
tion of the pupils ; and, where possible, before the school-house, 
a gravelled play-ground, and place for gymnastic exercises. — 
The third provision comprises a complement of books for the 
use of master and scholar ; according to the degree of the 
school, a collection of maps, and geographical instruments, models 
for drawing and writing, music, &c, instruments and collec- 
tions for natural history and mathematics, the apparatus for 
gymnastic exercises, and, where this is taught, the tools and 
machines requisite for technological instruction. — In regard to the 
fourth, if there be no charity-school specially provided, every 
public school is bound to afford to the poor instruction, wholly or 
in part gratuitous ; as likewise the books and other necessaries of 
education. 

But, as considerable funds are required for the maintenance of 
a school established on such extensive bases, it is necessary to 
employ all the means which place and circumstances afford. We 
cannot attempt to follow M. Cousin through this part of the law, 
however important and wisely calculated are its regulations. We 
shall state only in general, that it is recognised as a principle, that 
as the gymnasia and other establishments of public education of 



552 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

the same rank, are principally supported at the cost of the general 
funds of the state or province ; so the inferior schools are pri- 
marily, and, as far as possible, solely, maintained at the expense 
of the towns, and of the country -school unions. The support of 
these schools is of the highest civil obligation. In the towns it 
can be postponed to no other communal want ; and in the country 
all landholders, tenants, fathers of families, must contribute in 
proportion to the rent of their property within the territory of 
the school-union, or to the produce of their industry ; this either 
in money or kind. Over and above these general contributions, 
fees also (Schidgeld), regulated by the departmental authorities, 
are paid by the scholars, but not levied by the schoolmaster ; 
unless under particular circumstances it be deemed expedient to 
commute this special payment into an augmentation of the general 
contribution. 

III. — General Objects and different Degrees of Primary 
Education. 

Two degrees of primary instruction are distinguished by the 
law ; the Elementary schools and the Burgher schools. The ele- 
mentary schools {Elementarschulen) propose the development of 
the human faculties, through an instruction in those common 
branches of knowledge w T hich are indispensable to the lower 
orders, both of town and country. The burgher schools (Buer- 
gerschiden, Stadtschiden) * carry on the child till he is capable 
of manifesting his inclination for a classical education, or for this 
or that particular profession. The gymnasia continue tins educa- 
tion until the youth is prepared, either to commence his practical 
studies in common life, or his higher and special scientific studies 
in the university. 

These different gradations coincide in forming, so to speak, a 
great establishment of national education, one in system, and of 
which the parts, though each accomplishing a special end, are all 
mutually correlative. The primary education of which we speak* 
though divided into two degrees, has its peculiar unity and general 
laws ; it admits of accommodation, however, to the sex. language, 
religion, and future destination of the pupils. 1. Separate i 
blishments for girls should be formed, wherever possible, corre- 

* Called likewise Mittebchttlen, middle schools, and Realsehukn, real 
schools ; the last, because theyare less occupied with the study of languages 
( VerbaHa) than with the knowledge of things (Realm.) 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 553 

sponding to the elementary and larger schools for boys. 2. In 
those provinces of the monarchy (as the Polish) where a foreign 
language is spoken, besides lessons in the native idiom, the chil- 
dren shall receive complete instruction in German, which is also to 
be employed as the ordinary language of the school. 3. Differ- 
ence of religion in Christian schools necessarily determines differ- 
ences in religious instruction. This instruction shall always be 
accommodated to the spirit and doctrines of the persuasion to which 
the school belongs. But, as in every school of a Christian state, 
the dominant spirit (common to all creeds) should be piety, and a 
profound reverence of the Deity, every Christian school may 
receive the children of every sect. The masters and superin- 
tendents ought to avoid, with scrupulous care, every shadow of 
religious constraint or annoyance. No school should be abused 
to any purposes of proselytism ; and the children of a worship 
different from that of the school, shall not be obliged, contrary 
to the wish of their parents or their own, to attend its religious 
instruction and exercises. Special masters of their own per- 
suasion shall have the care of their religious education ; and, 
should it be impossible to have as many masters as confessions, 
the parents should endeavour, with so much the greater soli- 
citude, to discharge this duty themselves, if disinclined to allow 
their children to attend the religious lessons of the school. 
Christian schools may admit Jewish children, but not Jewish 
schools Christian children. The primitive destination of every 
school, says the law, is to train youth, that, with a knowledge 
of the relations of man to God, it may foster in them the desire 
of ruling their life by the spirit and principles of Christianity. 
The school shall, therefore, betimes second and complete the 
first domestic training of the child to piety. Prayer and edify- 
ing reflections shall commence and terminate the day ; and 
the master must beware that this moral exercise do never dege- 
nerate into a matter of routine. He must also see that the 
children are constant in their attendance on divine service — (with 
other regulations to a similar effect.) Obedience to the laws, 
loyalty, and patriotism, to be inculcated. JSTo humiliating or inde- 
cent castigation allowed ; and corporal punishment, in general, 
to be applied only in cases of necessity. Scholars found wholly 
incorrigible, in order to obviate bad example, to be at length 
dismissed. The pupils as they advance in age, to be employed 
in the maintenance of good order in the school, and thus betimes 



554 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

habituated to regard themselves as active and useful members of 
society. 

The primary education has for its scope the development of 
the different faculties, intellectual and moral, mental and bodily. 
Every complete Elementary school necessarily embraces the nine 
following branches: — 1. Religion, — morality, established on the 
positive truths of Christianity ; — 2. The German tongue, and in 
the Polish provinces, the vernacular language ; — 3. The elements 
of geometry and general principles of drawing ; 4. Calculation 
and applied arithmetic ; — 5. The elements of physics, of general 
history, and of the history of Prussia ; — 6. Singing ; — 7. Writing ; 
— 8. Gymnastic exercises ; — 9. The more simple manual labours, 
and some instruction in the relative country occupations. — Every 
Burgher school must teach the ten following branches : — 1. Reli- 
gion and morals. 2. The German language, and the vernacular 
idiom of the province, reading, composition, exercises of style, 
exercises of talent, and the study of the national classics. In the 
countries of the German tongue, the modern foreign languages 
are the objects of an accessory study. 3. Latin to a certain 
extent.* 4. The elements of mathematics, and in particular a 
thorough knowledge of practical arithmetic. 5. Physics, and 
natural history to explain the more important phenomena of 
nature. 6. Geography, and general history combined ; Prussia, 
its history, laws, and constitution, form the object of a particular 
study. 7. The principles of design ; to be taught with the 
instruction given in physics, natural history, and geometry. 8. 
The penmanship should be watched, and the hand exercised to 
write with neatness and ease. 9. Singing, in order to dcvelope the 
voice, to afford a knowledge of the art, and to enable the scholars 
to assist in the solemnities of the church. 10. Gymnastic exer- 
cises accommodated to the age and strength of the scholar. — Such 
is the minimum of education to be afforded by a burgher school. 
If its means enable it to attempt a higher instruction, so as to 
prepare the scholar, destined to a learned profession, for an 
immediate entrance into the gymnasium, the school then takes 
the name of Higher Town School, or Progymnasium (hot 
Stadtschule, Progymnasium,) f 

* This, we believe, is uot universally enforced. 

t We prefer in this, and some other respects, the order of the Bavarian 
schools. The boy is there prepared tor the (jfymmutum, which he enters at 
fourteen, in the " Latin School" which he enters at eleven. Tins is an esta- 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 555 

Every pupil, on leaving school, should receive from his mas- 
ters and the committee of superintendence, a certificate of his 
capacity, and of his moral and religious dispositions. These cer- 
tificates to be always produced on approaching the communion, 
and on entering into apprenticeship or service. They are given 
only at the period of departure, and in the burgher schools, as in 
the gymnasia, they form the occasion of a great solemnity. 

Every half-year pupils are admitted ; promoted from class to 
class ; and absolved at the conclusion of their studies. 

A special order will determine the number of lessons to be 
given daily and weekly upon each subject, and in every degree. 
No particular books are specified for the different branches in the 
primary schools ; they are left free to adopt the best as they 
appear. For religious instruction in the Protestant schools, the 
Bible and Catechisms. The younger scholars to have the Gospels 
and New Testament ; the older the whole Scriptures. Books of 
study to be carefully chosen by the committees, with concurrence 
of the superior authorities, the ecclesiastical being specially con- 
sulted in regard to those of a religious nature. For the Catholic 
schools, the Bishops, in concert with the provincial consistories, to 
select the devotional books ; and in case of any difference of opi- 
nion, the Minister of Public Instruction shall decide. 

Schoolmasters are to adopt the methods best accommodated to 
the natural development of the human mind ; — methods which 
keep the intellectual powers in constant, general, and spon- 
taneous exercise, and are not limited to the infusion of a mecha- 
nical knowledge.* The committees are to watch over the methods 

blishnient distinct from the burgher school. Of the history of education in 
Bavaria, we may, perhaps, take an opportunity of speaking. 

* The Bavarian Lehrplan fuer die Volkschulen is excellent on this point ; 
and so, indeed, are all the German writers on education. The prevalent 
ignorance in our own country, even of the one fundamental principle of 
instruction — u that every scholar must be his own teacher, or he will learn 
nothing ; " in other words, that the development is precisely in proportion to 
the exertion of the faculty, — has been signally exposed, both through example 
and precept, by our townsman, Mr Wood ; — a gentleman whose generous 
and enlightened devotion to the improvement of education entitles him to 
the warmest gratitude of his country. We have the high authority of Pro- 
fessor Pillans for stating, that in the parochial schools of Scotland, " the 
principle, That a child, in being taught to read should be taught at the same 
time to understand what he reads, is so far from being generally received, that 
the very opposite, if not openly avowed, is at least invariably acted on ! " It 
cannot, we trust, be now long before the Scottish schoolmaster be sent him- 



556 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

of the master, and to aid him by their council ; never to tole- 
rate a vicious method, and to report to the higher authorities 
should their admonitions be neglected. Parents and guardians 
have a right to scrutinize the system of education by which their 
children are taught ; and to address their complaints to the higher 
authorities, who are bound to have them carefully investigated. 
On the other hand, they are bound to co-operate with their pri- 
vate influence in aid of the public discipline : nor is it permitted 
that they should withdraw a scholar from any branch of education 
taught in the school as necessary. 

As a national establishment, every school should court the 
greatest publicity. In those for boys, besides the special half- 
yearly examinations, for the promotion from one class to another, 
there shall annually take place public examinations, in order to 
exhibit the spirit of the instruction, and the proficiency of the 
scholars. On this solemnity, the director, or one of the masters, 
in an official program, is to render an account of the condition 
and progress of the school. In fine, from time to time, there 
shall be published a general report of the state of education in 
each province. In schools for females, the examinations to take 
place in presence of the parents and masters, without any general 
invitation. 

But if the public instructors are bound to a faithful performance 
of their duties, they have a right, in return, to the gratitude and 
respect due to the zealous labourer in the sacred work of educa- 
tion. The school is entitled to claim universal countenance and 
aid, even from those who do not confide to it their children. All 
public authorities, each in its sphere, are enjoined to promote the 
public schools, and to lend support to the masters in the exercise 
of their office, as to any other functionaries of the state. In all 
the communes of the monarchy, the clergy of all Christian per- 
suasions, whether in the church, in their school visitations, or in 
their sermons on the opening of the classes, shall omit no oppor- 
tunity of recalling to the schools their high mission, and to the 
people their duties to these establishments. The civil authorities, 
the clergy, and the masters, shall everywhere co-operate in 

self to school. Scotland is, however, as far superior to England in her popu- 
lar education, as inferior to Germany. And, considering in what a barbarous 
manner our schoolmasters are educated, examined, appointed, paid, and 
superintended, they have accomplished far more than could reasonably hare 
been expected. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 557 

tightening the bonds of respect and attachment between the 
people and the school ; so that the nation may be more and more 
habituated to consider education as a primary condition of civil 
existence, and daily to take a deeper interest in its advancement. 

IV. — On the Training — Appointment — Promotion — Punishment 
of Primary Instructors. 

The best plans of education can only be carried into effect by 
good teachers ; and the State has done nothing for the instruction 
of the people, unless it take care that the schoolmasters have been 
well prepared, are encouraged and guided in their duty of self- 
improvement, and finally promoted and recompensed according to 
their progress, or punished in proportion to their faults. To ful- 
fil his duties, a schoolmaster should be pious and wise, impressed 
with the importance of his high and holy calling, well acquainted 
with its duties, and possessing the art of teaching and directing 
the young, — &c. 

Their Training. — To provide the schools gradually with such 
masters, their education must not be abandoned to chance ; it is 
necessary to continue establishing, in sufficient numbers, Semi- 
naries for primary instructors (Schidlehrer-Seminarien). % The 
cost of these establishments is to be borne in part by the public 
treasury of the State, in part by the departmental school 
exchequers. Every department should possess such a seminary, 
annually turning out a complement of young men, prepared and 
approved competent to their destination, (Candidaten,) equal in 
number to the average annual loss of schoolmasters in the depart- 
ment.! The following regulations are to be attended to in these 
establishments. 

1. No seminary for primary instructors to admit more than 
from sixty to seventy alumni (Praeparanden.) 

2. In departments where Protestants and Catholics are nearly 

* In Austria, where the name, we believe, was first applied, and in France, 
such establishments are termed Normal Schools. This expression, however, 
is ambiguous ; it, indeed, properly denotes the pattern school (Muster schule), 
to which a seminary for schoolmasters is usually, but not necessarily, 
attached. 

t This in 1819. At present there is not a department of the Prussian 
monarchy without its great primary seminary, and frequently, over and 
above, several smaller subsidiary institutions of the same kind. Of the 
Great Primary Seminaries, there existed in 1806, only fourteen ; in 1826, 
twenty-eight, i. e. one for each department; in 1831, thirty -four. 



Sm COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

equal, and where funds and other circumstances permit, there 
shall be established a seminary of this kind, for each religion. 
But where there is a great preponderance of either, the schools 
of the less numerous persuasion shall be provided with masters 
from a seminary of the same creed, in some neighbouring depart- 
ment, or from a small establishment of the kind annexed to a 
simple primary school. Seminaries common to Protestants and 
Catholics are sanctioned, provided the Sieves receive religious 
instruction in conformity to their belief. 

3. These seminaries are to be established, as far as possible, 
in towns of a middling size : — not in large, to remove the young 
men from the seductions of a great city ; — not in small, to allow 
them to profit by the vicinity of schools of different degrees. 

4. To enable them to recruit their numbers with the most 
likely subjects, and to educate these themselves, they shall, as 
frequently as possible, be in connexion with orphan hospitals and 
charity schools, — &c &c. 

5. It is not necessary to have two kinds of seminaries for pri- 
mary instructors, — &c. &c. 

6. The studies of the primary seminaries are not the same as 
the studies of the primary schools themselves. Admission into 
the seminary supposes a complete course of primary instruction, 
and the main scope of the institution is to add, to the knowledge 
previously acquired, accurate and comprehensive notions of the 
art of teaching, and of the education of children, in general and 
in detail, in theory and in practice.* But as it may not always 
be possible to obtain subjects fully prepared, it is permitted to 
receive, as seminarists, those who are not yet perfect in the 
higher departments of their previous studies. The age of admis- 
sion is from sixteen to eighteen. 

7. The principal aim of the primary seminaries is to form their 

* We may here state, that the branches of instruction, in the Prussian 
primary seminaries, are in general : — 1. Religion; Biblical history, study of 
the Bible, an Introduction to the sacred books, Christian doctrine and 
morals. — 2. German language etymologieally considered, grammar, the 
communication of thought in speech and writing. — .1. Mathematics; mental 
arithmetic, ciphering, geometry. — 4. History. — 5. Geography and geology. — 
6. Natural history, physics. — 7. Music; singing, theory of music, general 
bass, execution on the violin and organ.— 8. Drawing. — 9. Penmanship. — 
10. Pedagogic and didactic (t. e. art oi moral education, and art of intellec- 
tual instruction) theory to be constantly conjoined with practice. — 11. Church 
service. — 12. Elements of horticulture.— 18. Gymnastic exercises. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 559 

pupils to health of body and mind ; to inspire them with religious 
sentiment, and the kindred pedagogical spirit. The instruction 
and exercises in the seminary to be coextensive with the branches 
of education in the primary schools. In regard to methods, it 
should be less attempted to communicate theories, than, by enlight- 
ened observation and personal experience, to lead the pupil to 
clear and simple principles ; and to this end, schools should be 
attached to all the seminaries, in which the alumni may be exer- 
cised to practice. 

8. The course of preparation to last three years. The first 
in supplement of the previous primary education ; the second 
devoted to special instruction of a higher order ; and the third 
to practical exercises in the annexed primary school, and other 
establishments of the place. For those who require no supple- 
mentary instruction, a course of two years may suffice. 

9. Small stipends allowed to a certain number of poor and pro- 
mising seminarists. 

10. All who receive such a gratuity, are obliged, at the end of 
their course, to accept any vacancy to which they may be nomi- 
nated by the provincial consistories — with the prospect of a more 
lucrative appointment if their conduct merit promotion. 

11. The regulations of every seminary to be ratified by the 
minister of public instruction ; immediate superintendence to be 
exercised by the provincial consistories, and, in respect to the 
religious instruction of the several seminaries, by the clerical 
authorities. 

But the preparation of primary schoolmasters is not exclu- 
sively limited to such seminaries. Large primary schools, cler- 
gymen, and able schoolmasters, may, at the discretion of the 
provincial consistories, be allowed to attempt this ; their pupils, 
if deficient, to be sent to a seminary to complete their qualifica- 
tion. The superintendence of these petty establishments may 
be confided to the inspectors of the circle. When joined to a 
girls' school, these minor establishments may educate school- 
mistresses. 

Their appointment. — Every man, foreigner or native, of ma- 
ture age, irreproachable in his moral and religious character, 
and approved, by examination, competent to its duties, is eligi- 
ble to the office of public instructor. But this appointment 
belongs, by preference, to the seminarists, who, after a full 
course of preparation, have been regularly examined, and found 



560 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

duly qualified in the theory and practice of all the various 
branches of primary instruction. These (half-yearly and annual) 
examinations are conducted by a commission of four compe- 
tent individuals ; two of its members being lay, two clerical. 
The clerical members, for the examination of Protestant instruc- 
tors, are appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities of the pro- 
vince; those for Catholic, by the bishop of the diocese. The 
lay members are nominated by the provincial consistory. These 
appointments are not for life, but renewable every three years. 
Religion, and the other branches, form the subject of two sepa- 
rate examinations. For Catholic teachers, the religious examir 
nation takes place under the presidency of a church dignitary 
delegated by the bishop ; for Protestant, under the presidency 
of a clergyman. The examinations on temporal matters are con- 
ducted under the presidency of a lay counsellor of the provincial 
consistory. Both parts of the examination, though distinct, are 
viewed as constituting but a single whole; all the members of 
the commission are always present, and the result, if favourable, 
is expressed in the same certificate. This certificate, besides the 
moral character of the candidate, states the comparative degree 
of his qualification, — eminently capable, sufficiently capable, just 
capable ; and also specifies his adaptation to the higher or the 
lower department of primary instruction. Those found incom- 
petent, are either declared wholly incapable, or are remitted to 
their studies. The others, with indication of the degree of their 
certificate, are placed on the list of candidates of each depart- 
ment, and have a claim to be appointed ; but to accelerate this, 
the names of those worthy of choice are published twice a-year in 
the official papers of the departments, where the order of their 
classification is that of their certificates. Schoolmistresses, also, 
are approved competent through examinations regulated by the 
provincial consistories. 

Incentives to Improvement — Promotion. — It is the duty of the 
clergy and of the enlightened men to whom the superinten- 
dence and inspection of schools are confided, to watch over the 
progressive improvement of the masters. In particular, it is 
incumbent on the directors and rectors of gymnasia and town- 
schools to take an active interest in the younger masters, to 
afford them advice, to point out their errors, and to stimulate 
(hem to improve themselves by attending the lessons of more 
experienced teachers, by cultivating their society, by forming 



PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 561 

school conferences or other associations of instructors, and by 
studying the best works on education. The provincial consis- 
tories, in electing able and zealous masters of the popular schools, 
should engage them to organize extensive associations among 
the schoolmasters of town and country, in order to foster the 
spirit of their calling, and to promote their improvement by 
regular meetings, by consultations, conversations, practical expe- 
riments, written essays, the study of particular branches of 
instruction, reading in common well-chosen works, and by the 
discussions to which these give rise. The directors of such 
associations merit encouragement and support, in proportion 
to their application and success. By degrees, every circle to 
have a society of schoolmasters.* Distinguished masters, and 
those destined to the direction of primary seminaries, should 
likewise, with the approbation, or on the suggestion of the mini- 
ster, be enabled, at the public expense, to travel in the interior 
of the country or abroad, in order to obtain information touch- 
ing the organization, and wants of the primary schools.f Zeal 
and ability in the master to be rewarded by promotion to situa- 
tions of a higher order, and even, in particular cases, by extraor- 
dinary recompenses. The provincial consistories to prepare 
tables of the different places of schoolmasters, classed according 
to their emolument ; and to take care that the promotion be in 
general made in conformity to these lists. No term of service 
affords of itself a valid claim to promotion ; when a place is soli- 

* These associations, among other institutions, are at once cause and 
effect of the pedagogical spirit prevalent throughout the empire, — a spirit 
which, unfortunately, has no parallel in any other country. How large a 
share of active intellect is, in Germany, occupied with education, may be 
estimated from the number of works on that science which annually appear. 
Paedagogy forms one of the most extensive departments of German litera- 
ture. Taking the last three years, we find, from Thon's catalogues, that, in 
1830, there were published 501— in 1831, 452— in 1832, 526 new works of 
this class. Of these, twenty were journals, maintained exclusively by their 
natural circulation. Does Britain, or France, thus support even one ? 

t This regulation has proved of the highest advantage. But the Prussian 
government has done much more. Not only have intelligent schoolmasters 
been sent abroad to study the institutions of other countries, as those of 
Graser, Poehlman, Pestalozzi, Fellenberg, &c, but almost every foreign edu- 
cational method of any celebrity has been fully and fairly tried by experi- 
ment at home. In this way the Prussian public education has been always 
up to every improvement of the age, and obviated any tendency to a partial 
and one-sided development. 

2n 



5G2 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

cited superior to that for which the petitioner lias received a cer- 
tificate, an examination of promotion must take place before the 
same authorities, to whom the examination for appointment is 
intrusted. Where the competency is notorious, examination may, 
by the ratifying power, be dispensed with. The departmental 
authority must, at the end of each year, transmit to the ministry 
a list of all masters newly placed or promoted, with a statement 
of the value of the several appointments ; and this authority is 
never excusable if it leave personal merit without employment 
and recompense, or the smallest service unacknowledged. (The 
regulations touching the degradation and dismissal of incapable, 
negligent, immoral masters, we must wholly omit.) 

V. — Of the Direction of the Schools of Primary Instruction.. 

Such is the internal organization of the primary education. 
But this organization would not work of itself; it requires an 
external force and intelligence to impel at once and guide it — in 
other words, a governing power. The fundamental principle of 
this government is, that the ancient union of popular instruction 
with Christianity and the Church should be maintained ; always, 
however, under the supreme direction of the ministerial authority. 

Communal Authorities. — General rule. — That as each commune, 
urban or rural, has its primary school or schools, so it must have 
its special Superintending School Committee, (Schulvor stand.) 

Primary Country Schools. — Where the church contributes to 
their support, this committee is composed of the patron and cler- 
gyman of the parish, of the magistrates of the commune, and of 
several fathers of families, members of the school-union ; and 
where all are not of one faith, the proportion of the sects among 
the members of the union must be represented by the proportion 
of the sects among the fathers of families in the committee. The 
fixed members of the committee form its Committee of Admini- 
stration (verwaltende Schulvorstand) ; the others arc elected (for 
four years, and capable of re-election) by the school-union, and 
confirmed by the provincial consistory. No one allowed to decline 
this duty, unless burdened with another communal office. In 
schools exclusively endowed by the church, the committee of 
administration may be wholly ecclesiastical. However consti- 
tuted, this committee takes cognizance of all that concerns the 
school, within and without. The pastor, in particular, who is the 
natural inspector of the village school, ought to be frequent in his 



DIRECTION OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS. 503 

visits, and unremitted in his superintendence of the masters. The 
committees receive all complaints, which they transmit to the 
superior authorities. Their exertions should be especially directed 
to see that all is conformable to regulation ; to animate, direct, 
and counsel the instructors ; and to excite the zeal of the inhabi- 
tants for education. Articulate directions on the more special 
duties of the administrative committees, and accommodated to 
their several circumstances, to be published by the provincial 
consistories. Services gratuitous. 

Primary Town Schools. — In petty towns, where there is only 
a single school, the committees of administration are composed, 
as those of the country ; only, if there be two or more clergymen, 
it is the first who regularly belongs to this committee ; to which 
is also added one of the magistrates, and a representative of the 
citizens. 

In towns of a middling size, which support several primary 
schools, there is to be formed, in like manner, a single common 
administration (Ortschulbehoerde), except only, that to this coun- 
cil is added a father of a family of each school, and a clergyman 
of each sect, if the schools be of different creeds. It will form 
matter of consideration whether a person specially skilled in 
scholastic affairs (Schulmann) should be introduced. 

Large towns are to be divided into districts, each having its 
superintending school-committee. There shall, however, be a 
central point of superintendence for all the schools, gymnasia 
excepted ; this called the School-commission, {Schulcommission.) 
This properly composed of the Lutheran Superintendent, and 
of the Catholic Arch-priest or Dean of the place, and according 
to the size of the town and number of its schools, of one or more 
members of the magistracy, of an equal number of representa- 
tives of the citizens, and of one or two individuals versed in 
the science of education. A member of each committee of 
administration (if special circumstances do not prevent) is added, 
unless one be already there, in a different capacity. These 
bodies to be confirmed by the provincial consistories, who must 
take care that only upright, intelligent, and zealous individuals 
are admitted. The members elected for six years, with capacity 
of re-election; no one, however, obliged to serve longer than 
three. Municipal functions alone afford a plea of excuse. Ser- 
vices unpaid. The school-commission is bound — to see that the 
town be provided with the necessary schools — to attend to their 



564 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

wants — to administer the general school-fund — to take care that 
the regulations prescribed by the law, the minister, or the pro- 
vincial consistories, are duly executed, in regard to school attend- 
ance by the children of rich and poor — to do every thing for the 
internal and external prosperity of the schools, &c. &c. &c. The 
district committees have each the superintendence of their 
schools, in subordination to the school-commission. The school- 
commission and district-committees to meet in ordinary once a- 
month.' Their presidents elected for three years by the members, 
and confirmed by the consistory of the province. Decisions, by 
plurality of voices ; except in matters touching the internal eco- 
nomy of the school, which are determined by the opinion of the 
clergymen, and those specially versed in educational matters. 
The committees may call in to assist in their extraordinary general 
deliberations, the clergy and instructors of the district, or a part 
of them. The school-commissions annually address circumstantial 
reports on the schools under their inspection to the provincial con- 
sistories ; in the petty towns, and country communes, this report 
is made through the inspectors of the circle. 

Authorities of the Circle. — There is a general superintendence 
over the inferior schools of a circle, as likewise over the commit- 
tees of administration of these schools, and this superintendence is 
exercised by the Inspector of the Circle, (Schul-Kreis-Aufseher, or 
Schul-Kreis-Inspektor). The school circle is co -extensive with 
the diocese of the Protestant Superintendent and Catholic Bishop. 
But if the diocese be too large for one school-inspection, it must 
be divided into two circles. For Protestant schools, the superin- 
dents are in general the inspectors of the circle. The greatest 
care is therefore to be taken that no churchman be nominated 
superintendent, who does not, besides his merely clerical acquire- 
ments, possess those qualifications necessary for the inspection of 
schools. Clergymen, not superintendents, may, in certain spe- 
cified circumstances, be appointed inspectors ; and even laymen, 
distinguished for their pedagogical knowledge and activity ; 
always, however, with permission previously obtained from the 
Minister of Public Instruction. For the Catholic schools, the 
inspectors are in general the Deans. Under the same conditions 
as for the Protestant schools, other ecclesiastics and even lay- 
men permitted to replace the Deans. The Protestant inspectors 
are nominated by the consistory of the province, and confirmed 
l>v tho Minister of Public Instruction. The Catholic inspectors 



DIRECTION OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS. 565 

are proposed by the bishops, and presented, with an articulate 
statement of their qualifications, by the provincial consistories, to 
the Minister for confirmation. The Minister has a right to decline 
the confirmation, when well-founded objections can be alleged 
against the presentee, and to summon the Bishop to make a new 
proposal. The inspector of the circle is charged with watching 
over the internal management of schools, the proceedings of the 
committees, and the conduct of the instructors. The whole scho- 
lastic system, indeed, is subjected to their revision and superior 
direction. They must make themselves fully acquainted with the 
state of all the schools, by means of the half-yearly reports trans- 
mitted by the communal committees, by attending the examina- 
tions, by unexpected visits as frequently as may be, and by the 
solemn revisions to be made once a-year by every inspector in 
all the schools under his jurisdiction In these revisions, he 
examines the children assembled together : requires an account 
of the school administration, internal and external, from the 
administrative committee ; receives the complaints and wishes of 
the members of the school-union, and takes measures to remedy 
defects. He transmits a full report of the revision to the con- 
sistory of the province. The consistory from time to time name 
counsellors from its body to assist at the stated, or to make extra- 
ordinary, revisions. 

For the external management of country schools, the inspectors 
should act in concert with the counsellors of the circle, {Land- 
raethe.) All the regulations and inquiries of the provincial con- 
sistories, relative to the internal affairs of the schools, are address- 
ed to the inspectors, as on the other hand, the internal wants of 
the schools, and of their masters, are brought by the inspectors to 
the knowledge of the consistories. The Catholic inspectors are 
bound to furnish to the bishop the information required touching 
the religious concerns of the schools; but their primary duty is to 
inform the provincial consistories of their general condition. On 
the other hand, they should communicate to the bishop the report 
of the annual revision, addressed to the consistories. The Protest- 
ant inspectors, as clergymen, are already in connexion with the 
Synods ; but they, as well as the clerical members of the commit- 
tees of administration, ought to inform the synods of the state of 
the schools, and take counsel in the synodal meetings in regard to 
their improvement. Lay inspectors should do this by writing. 



566 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

Each inspector receives an annual indemnity for the travelling 
expenses he may incur in the discharge of his duties, the amount 
to be rated by the provincial consistories. The study of the theory 
and practice of education is made imperative at the University, 
both on Protestant and Catholic students of theology ; and no 
one shall be allowed to pass the examination for holy orders, 
unless found conversant with all matters requisite for the admini- 
stration and superintendence of schools. The law of 1819 stops 
with the inspector of the circle. But it should be remembered, 
that over the inspector stands the school-counsellor, (Schulrath ;) 
a functionary belonging to the departmental council of regency, 
and yet nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. The 
regency represented by the school-counsellor, is not to be con- 
founded with the consistory of the province, of which the school- 
board (Schulcollegium) forms part. This high scholastic authority, 
provincial, not departmental, intermeddles with primary instruc- 
tion only in certain more important points ; for example, the 
seminaries for primary schoolmasters, lying, as they do, beyond 
the sphere of the regency, of the school-counsellor, and of the 
inspector of the circle. Of these we have already spoken, (supra, 
pp. 544, 546.) 

VI. — Of Private Schools. 

In Prussia all education, but especially the education of the 
people, rests on the public establishments ; the intelligence of the 
nation was too important a concern to be abandoned to chance : 
but though no dependence is placed by the State on private 
schools, these institutions are not proscribed, but authorized under 
the conditions necessary to obviate all serious detriment to the 
cause of education. AYe cannot enter into any detail on this 
head. Suffice it to say, that while the State on the one hand, 
through the high qualification it secures in those to whom it con- 
fides the care of public instruction, raises the general standard of 
pedagogical competency to a very lofty pitch ; on the other, it 
takes measures directly to abate the nuisance, so prevalent among 
ourselves, of unqualified interlopers in this difficult and all-impor- 
tant occupation. In Prussia, quacks are tolerated neither in 
medicine nor in education. Private instructors must produce 
satisfactory evidence of their moral and religious character : their 
capacity is ascertained by examination : and the license which 
they obtain, specifies what, and in what degree, thev are found 



PRIVATE SCHOOLS— COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 567 

qualified to teach. Neither are private establishments of educa- 
tion emancipated from public inspection. 



We must subjoin M. Cousin's observations on this Law, and on 
the expediency of its adoption. They are of high importance ; 
and from their application to the circumstances of our own coun- 
try, are hardly less deserving of consideration in England than 
in France. 

" The points of which I have now treated comprehend the whole mecha- 
nism of primary education in Prussia. There is not a single article but is 
literally borrowed from the law of 1819. This law, without entering into 
specialties relative to the several provinces, neglects no object of interest. 
As a legislative measure regarding primary instruction, it is the most com- 
prehensive and perfect with which I am acquainted. 

" It is, indeed, impossible not to acknowledge its consummate wisdom. 
No inapplicable general principles ; no spirit of system ; no particular and 
exclusive views, govern the legislator ; he avails himself of all the means 
conducive to his end, even when these means differ widely from each other. 
A king, an absolute king, has given this law ; an irresponsible minister has 
counselled or digested it ; yet no mistaken spirit of centralization or minis- 
terial bureaucracy is betrayed ; almost every thing is committed, to the 
authorities of the commune, of the department, of the province ; with the 
minister is left only the impulsion and general superintendence. The clergy 
have an ample share in the direction of popular instruction, and the fathers 
of families are likewise consulted in the towns and in the villages. In a 
word, all the interests naturally concerned in the business, find their place 
in this organization, and concur each in its own manner to the common 
end — the civilisation of the people. 

" This Prussian law appears to me, therefore, excellent ; but we are not 
to imagine it the result of one man's wisdom. Baron von Altenstein, by 
whom it was digested, is not its author ; and it may be said to have already 
existed in a mass of partial ordinances, and in the usages and manners of 
the country. There is not, perhaps, a single article of this long law, of which 
there are not numerous precedents ; and in a notice touching the history of 
primary education in Prussia, in Beckedorff 's Journal, I find enactments of 
1728 and 1736, comprising a large proportion of the regulations enforced by 
the law of 1819. The obligation on parents to send their children to school 
is of long standing in Prussia. The extensive interference of the Church in 
the education of the people ascends to the origin of Protestantism, to which 
it indeed belongs ; for it is evident that a revolution, accomplished in the 
name of liberty of thought, behoved, for its own defence and establishment, 
to work out the mental emancipation of the people, and the diffusion of edu- 
cation. The law of 1819 undoubtedly pitches sufficiently high, what is to be 
taught in the elementary and burgher schools ; but if this instruction appear 
excessive for certain localities, it must be stated that it is already practised, and 
even surpassed, in many others. The boldest measure is the establishment of a 



568 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 

great seminary for the education of primary schoolmasters in each department ; 
but there were already similar establishments in most of the ancient provinces 
of the monarchy. In fine, this law did hardly more than distribute uniformly 
what existed previously, not only in Prussia, but throughout the whole of 
Germany. It is not, therefore, a metaphysical Utopia, arbitrary and arti- 
ficial, like the greater part of our laws concerning primary education, but a 
measure founded on experience and reality. And herein is seen the reason 
why it could be carried into effect, and why it has so rapidly produced the 
happiest fruits. Previously assured that it was every where practicable, 
the Prussian minister every where required its execution, leaving the 
details to the authorities to whom they belonged, and reserving only to 
himself the primary movement, the impulsion, and the verification of the 
whole. This impulsion has been so steady, this verification so severe, and 
the communal, departmental, and provincial authorities, the School-board 
in the provincial consistories, the School- counsellor in each council of depart- 
ment, the Inspectors in the circles, the Commissions in the towns, and the 
Committees m the urban and rural communes — all the authorities superin- 
tendent of the schools, have exerted a zeal at once so unremitted, and so 
well applied, that at present what the law prescribes is almost everywhere 
below what is actually performed. For example : — The law commands the 
establishment in each department of a great primary Seminary ; and there 
is now, not only one such in every department, but frequently, likewise, 
several smaller subsidiary seminaries ; — a result which, in a certain sort, 
guarantees all others ; for such establishments can only flourish in propor- 
tion as the masters whom they prepare find comfortable appointments, and 
the comfortable appointment of masters says every thing in regard to the pro- 
sperity of primary instruction. The schoolmasters have been raised to func- 
tionaries of the state, and as such have now right to a retiring pension in 
their old age; and there is formed in every department a fund for the 
widows and orphans of schoolmasters, which the law has recommended 

rather than enforced The greatest difficulty waa 

to obtain, in the new provinces, and particularly those of the Rhine, the 
execution of that article of the law which, under rigorous penalties, imposes 
on parents the obligation of sending their children to school. The minister 
wisely suspended that part of the law in these provinces, and applied himself 
to accomplish a similar result by persuasion and emulation; then, at last, 
when he had disseminated the taste for education in these provinces, and 
deemed them sufficiently prepared, he, in 1825, rendered the law obligatory, 

and thenceforward strictly enforced its execution [Examples.] 

The law has been universally applied, but with a prudent combination of 

mildness and rigour. Thus, &c I have thought it useful to 

study the mode in which the Government has applied the general law o( 
1819 to the Grand Duchy of Posen, far behind even the provinces of the 
Rhine. I have under my eyes a number of documents, which prove the 
wisdom of the ministerial measures and the progress which primary instruc- 
tion, with the civilisation it represents, have made in this Polish portion o\' 
the monarchy. It would be likewise desirable that there were published in 
French, all the ministerial and provincial instructions touching the applica- 
tion of the law of 1819 to the Jews, and to the dissemination of* a taste tor edu- 



COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 569 

cation in this portion of the Prussian population, numerous and wealthy, 
but comparatively unenlightened, and apprehensive lest the faith of their 
children might be periled by an attendance on the public schools. 

" In the present state of things, a law regarding primary education is, in 
France, assuredly a measure of indispensable necessity. But how is a good 
law to be framed in the absence of precedents, and of all experience in this 
important matter? The education of the people has been hitherto so 
neglected ; the attempts have been so few, and these few so unsuccessful, 
that we are totally destitute of those common notions, those foreclosed opi- 
nions irradicated at once in our habits and judgments, which constitute the 
conditions and bases of a true legislation. I am anxious for a law, and a 
law I also dread ; for I tremble lest we should again commence a course of 
visionary legislation, instead of turning our attention to what actually is. 
God grant that we be made to comprehend, that, at present, a law on pri- 
mary education can only be a provisory, not a definitive measure ; that of 
necessity it must be remodelled some ten years hence, and that the problem 
is only to supply the more urgent wants, and bestow a legislative sanction 
on some incontestible points. What are these points ? I will attempt to 
signalize them from actual facts. 

" The notion of compelling parents to send their children to school, is not 
perhaps sufficiently prevalent to enable us at present to pass it incontinently 
into a law ; but all are at one in this — that a school is an establishment 
necessary in every commune, and it is readily admitted that this school 
should be maintained at the expense of the commune, allowing the com- 
mune, if too poor, to have recourse on the department, and the department 
on the state. This point, then, is not disputed, and ought to be ratified into 
a law. The practice has even preceded the enactment : during the last year 
the municipal councils have been every where voting the highest amount of 
funds within their means for the education of the people of their commune. 
There remains only to convert this almost general fact into a legal obliga- 
tion. 

" You are also aware, sir, that many councils of department have felt the 
necessity of ensuring the supply of schoolmasters, and then* better educa- 
tion, by establishing within their bounds a primary normal school ; and we 
may affirm, that in this expenditure there has been frequently more of 
luxury than of parsimony. This also is a valuable indication ; and the law 
would only confirm and generalize what at present takes place almost every 
where, by decreeing a primary normal school for each department, as a 
primary school for every commune : it being understood that this primary 
normal school should be of greater or less extent, in proportion to the 
resources of each department. 

" Here, then, are two very important points on which all are agreed : 
Have you not also been struck with the demands of a great many towns, 
large and small, for schools superior to the common primary schools, and in 
which the instruction, without attempting to emulate our royal and com- 
munal colleges in classical and scientific studies, should devote a more parti- 
cular attention to objects of a more general utility, and indispensable to that 
numerous class of the population which, without entering into the learned 
professions, finds, however, the want of a more extensive and varied culture 



570 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 

than the lower orders, strictly so called — the peasants and artisans? The 
towns every where call out for such establishments ; several municipal coun- 
cils have voted considerable funds for this purpose, and have addressed them- 
selves to you, in order to obtain the necessary authorization, assistance, and 
advice. Here it is impossible not to observe the symptom of a veritable want, 
the indication of an important chasm in our system of public education. You 
are well aware that I am a zealous defender of classical and scientific studies ; 
not only do I think that it is expedient to keep up our collegial plan of 
studies, more especially the philological department of that plan, but I am 
convinced that it ought to be strengthened and extended, and thereby, 
always maintaining our incontestible superiority in the physical and mathe- 
matical sciences, to be able to emulate Germany in the solidity of our classi- 
cal instruction. In fact, classical studies are, beyond comparison, the most 
essential of all, conducing, as they do, to the knowledge of our humanity, 
which they consider under all its mighty aspects and relations : here, in the 
language and literature of nations who have left behind a memorable trace 
of their passage on the earth ; there, in the pregnant vicissitudes of history, 
which continually renovate and improve society ; and finally, in philosophy, 
which reveals to us the simple elements, and the more uniform organization of 
that wondrous being, which history, literature, and languages successively 
clothe in forms the most diversified, and yet always relative to some more or 
less important part of its internal constitution. Classical studies maintain 
the sacred tradition of the intellectual and moral life of our humanity. To 
enfeeble them would, in my eyes, be an act of barbarism, an attempt against 
true civilisation, and in a certain sort, the crime of lese-humanity. May our 
royal colleges, then, and even a large proportion of our communal, continue 
to introduce into the sanctuary the flower of our French youth ; they will 
deserve well of their country. But the whole population — can it, ought it, 
to enter our colleges ? In France, primary education is but a scantling ; 
and between this education and that of our colleges, there is a blank ; hence 
it follows that the father of a family, even in the lower part of the bourgeoisie, 
who has the honourable desire of bestowing a suitable education on his sons, 
can only do so by sending them to college. Serious inconveniences are the 
result. In general, these young men, who are not conscious of a lofty des- 
tination, prosecute their studies with little assiduity ; and when they return 
to the profession and habits of their family, as nothing in the routine of their 
ordinary life occurs to recall and keep up their college studies, a few yenrs 
are sure to obliterate the smattering of classical knowledge they possessed. 
They also frequently contract at college acquaintances and tastes which 
make it almost impossible to accommodate themselves again to the humble 
condition of their parents : hence a race of restless men, discontented with 
their lot, with others, and with themselves, enemies of a social order, in 
which they do not feel themselves in their place, and ready, with some 
acquirements, a talent more or less solid, and an unbridled ambition, to 
throw themselves into all the paths either of servility or revolt. Our colleges 
should undoubtedly remain open to all, but we ought not to invite into them, 
without discretion, the lower orders: and this we do, unless we establish 
institutions intermediate between the primary schools and the colleges. Ger- 
many, and Prussia in particular, are rich in establishments of this descrip- 



COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 571 

tion. I have already described several in detail, at Frankfort, Weimar, Leip- 
sic ; and they are consecrated by the Prussian law of 1819. You are aware 
that I speak of what are called Burgher- schools (Buergerschulen), a word 
which accurately contradistinguishes them from the Learned Schools {Gelehr- 
tenschulen), called in Germany Gymnasia, and with us Colleges ; a name in 
other respects honourable to the bourgeoisie, who are not degraded by 
attending these schools, and to the people, who are thus elevated to the 
bourgeoisie. The burgher schools constitute the higher degree of primary 
instruction, of which the elementary schools are the lower. There are thus 
only two degrees : 1. The Elementary school, which is the common basis of 
all popular education in town and country ; 2. The Burgher -school, which, in 
towns of every size where there exists a middle class, affords to all those who 
are not destined for the learned professions, an education sufficiently exten- 
sive and liberal. The Prussian law, which fixes a maximum for the instruc- 
tion of the elementary school, fixes a minimum for that of the burgher 
school ; and there are two very different examinations, in order to obtain 
the license of primary teacher in these several degrees. The elementaiy 
school ought to be one ; for it represents, and is destined to foster and con- 
firm, the national unity, and, in general, it is not right that the limit fixed by 
law for the instruction in the elementary school should be overpassed ; but 
the case is different in the Burgher-school ; as this is destined for a class 
essentially different, the middle class ; and it should naturally be able to rise 
in accommodation to the higher circumstances of that class in the more im- 
portant towns. Thus it is that in Prussia the burgher school has various 
gradations, from the minimum fixed by law, with which I have made you 
acquainted, up to that higher degree where it is connected with the Gymna- 
sium, properly so denominated, and thus sometimes obtains the name of 
Progymnasium. I transmit you an instruction relative to the different pro- 
gymnasia in the department of Munster ; you will there see that these estab- 
lishments are, as the title indicates, preparatory gymnasia, where the classi- 
cal and scientific instruction stops within certain limits, but where the 
burgher class can obtain a truly liberal education. In general, the German 
burgher schools, somewhat inferior to our colleges in classical and scientific 
studies, are incomparably superior to them in what is taught of religion, 
geography, history, the modern languages, music, drawing, and national 
literature. In my opinion, it is of the very highest importance to establish 
in France, by one name or other, burgher schools, under various modifica- 
tions, and to remodel to this form a certain number of our communal col- 
leges. I regard this, sir, as an affair of state. Let it not be said that we 
have already various degrees of primary instruction in France, and that what 
I require has been already provided. There is nothing of the kind ; we have 
three degrees, it is true, but ill- defined ; the distinction is therefore naught. 
These three degrees are an arbitrary classification, the principle of which I 
do not pretend to comprehend, whilst the two degrees determined by the 
Prussian law are manifestly founded on the nature of things. Finally, 
comprehending these two degrees within the circle of primary education, it 
is not unimportant to distinguish and characterise them by different names ; 
but these names — schools of the third, second, and first degree — mark 
nothing but abstract differences ; they speak not to the imagination, and 



572 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 

make no impression on the intellect. In Prussia, the names, Elementary 
School and Burgher- school, as representing the inferior and superior degrees 
of primary instruction, are popular. That of Mittelschule (Middle-school) is 
also employed in some parts of Germany, — a name which might, perhaps, 
be conveniently adopted by us. That, and Elementary School, would com- 
prehend the two essential degrees of primary instruction ; and our primary 
normal schools would furnish masters equally for both degrees ; for whom, 
however, there behoved to be two kinds of examinations, and two kinds of 
licenses. There would remain for you only to fix a minimum for the middle- 
school, as you would undoubtedly do for the elementary school, taking care 
to allow the several departments gradually to surpass their minimum, 
according to their resources and their success. 

" This is what appears to me substantially contained in all the petitions 
addressed to you by the towns, whether to change the subjects taught in our 
communal colleges ; whether to add to the classical and scientific instruction 
afforded in our royal colleges, other courses of more general utility ; whether, 
in fine, to be allowed schools which they know not how to name, and which 
more than once they have denominated Industrial Schools, in contradistinc- 
tion to our colleges. Care must be taken not to weaken the classical studies 
of our colleges ; on the contrary, I repeat it, they ought to be strengthened. 
We should avoid the introduction of two descriptions of pupils into our col- 
leges ; this is contrary to all good discipline, and would unavoidably enervate 
the more difficult studies to the profit of the easier. Neither is it right to 
give the name of industrial schools to schools in which the pupils are not 
supposed to have any particular vocation. The people feel only their wants ; 
it belongs to you, sir, to make choice of the means by which these wants are 
to be satisfied. A cry is raised from one extremity of France to the other, 
demanding for three-fourths of the French nation establishments intermediate 
between the simple elementary schools and the colleges. The prayers are 
urgent ; they are almost unanimous. Here again is a point of the very 
highest importance, on which it would be easy to dilate. The general 
prayer, numerous attempts more or less successful, call out for a law, and 
render it at once indispensable and easy." 

Our limits compel us to conclude, leaving much interesting 
matter of the Rapport unnoticed, and the whole Projet de Loi. 
What we have extracted of the former, will afford a sample of 
the exceeding importance of its contents. Of this we have before 
us a German translation by Dr Kroeger of Hamburgh, who has 
appended some valuable notes ; but, though the work is of incom- 
parably greater importance for this country, we have little expec- 
tation that it will appear in English. We are even ignorant of 
our wants. In fact, the difficulty of all educational improvement 
in Britain lies less in the amount, however enormous, of work to 
be performed, than in the notion that not a great deal is requisite. 
Our pedagogical ignorance is only equalled by our pedagogical 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 573 

conceit ; and where few are competent to understand, all believe 
themselves qualified to decide. 

Had our limits permitted, we should have said something of the 
history of primary education in Germany ; and a word on the system 
of popular instruction in some of the North American democracies, 
which, however inferior, still approaches nearest to that established 
in the autocratic monarchies of the empire. We should also have 
attempted to show, though somewhat startling in its appliance to 
ourselves, that Aristotle's criterion of an honest and intelligent 
government holds universally true. A government, says the phi- 
losopher, ruling for the benefit of all, is, of its very nature, anxious 
for the education of all, not only because intelligence is in itself 
a good, and the condition of good, but even in order that its sub- 
jects may be able to appreciate the benefits of which it is itself the 
source ; whereas a government ruling for the profit of its admini- 
strators, is naturally willing to debase the mind and character of 
the governed, to the end that they may be disqualified to under- 
stand, to care for, and to assert their rights. — But we must leave 
these inquiries for the present ; trusting to be able, ere long, to 
resume them. 



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APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 



Thinking (employing that term as comprehending all our 
cognitive energies,) is of two kinds. It is either A) Negative or 
B) Positive. 

A.) Thinking is Negative, (in propriety, a negation of thought,) 
when Existence is not attributed to an object. It is of two kinds ; 
in as much as the one or the other of the conditions of positive 
thinking is violated. In either case, the result is Nothing. 

I.) If the condition of Non-contradiction be not fulfilled, there 
emerges The really Impossible, what has been called in the schools, 
Nihil purum. 

II.) If the condition of Relativity be not purified, there results 
The Impossible to thought ; that is, what may exist, but what we 
are unable to conceive existing. This impossible, the schools have 
not contemplated ; we are, therefore, compelled, for the sake of 
symmetry and precision, to give it a scholastic appellation in 
the Nihil cogitabile. 

B.) Thinking is Positive, (and this in propriety is the only 
real thought,) when Existence is predicated of an object. By 
existence is not, however, here meant real or objective existence, 
but only existence subjective or ideal. Thus, imagining a Centaur 
or a Hippogryph, we do not suppose that the phantasm has any 
being beyond our imagination; but still we attribute to it an 
actual existence in thought. Nay, we attribute to it a possible 
existence in creation ; for we can represent nothing, which we do 
not think, as within the limits of Almighty power to realise. — Posi- 
tive thinking can be brought to bear only under two conditions ; 
the condition of I) Non-contradiction, and the condition of II) 
Relativity. If both are fulfilled, we think Something. 

I.) Non-contradiction. This condition is insuperable. We 
think it, not only as a law of thought, but as a law of things ; and 
while we suppose its violation to determine an absolute impossi- 
bility, we suppose its fulfilment to afford only the Not-impossible. 
Thought is, under this condition, merely explicative or analytic ; 
and the condition itself is brought to bear under three phases, 
constituting three laws : i.) — the law of Identity ; ii.) — the law of 
Contradiction ; iii.) — the law of Excluded Middle. The science 
of these laws is Logic; and as the laws are only explicative, 
Logic is only formal. (The principle of Sufficient Reason should 
be excluded from Logic. For, in as much as this principle is not 
material (material=non-formal,) it is only a derivation of the three 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 579 

formal laws ; and in as much as it is material, it coincides with the 
principle of Causality, and is extra-logical). 

Though necessary to state the condition of Non- contradiction, 
there is no dispute about its effect, no danger of its violation. 
When I, therefore, speak of the Conditioned, I use the term in 
special reference to Relativity. By existence conditioned, is meant, 
emphatically, existence relative, existence thought under relation. 
Relation may thus be understood to contain all the categories and 
forms of positive thought. 

II.) Relativity. This condition (by which, be it observed, is 
meant the relatively or conditionally relative, and, therefore, not 
even the relative, absolutely or infinitely,) — this condition is not 
insuperable. We should not think it as a law of things, but 
merely as a law of thought ; for we find that there are contradic- 
tory opposites, one of which, by the rule of Excluded Middle, 
must be true, but neither of which can by us be positively thought, 
as possible. — Thinking, under this condition, is ampliative or 
synthetic. Its science, Metaphysic, (using that term in a compre- 
hensive meaning,) is therefore material, in the sense of non-formal. 
The condition of Relativity, in so far as it is necessary, is brought 
to bear under three principal relations ; the first of which springs 
from the subject of knowlege — the mind thinking, (the relation of 
Knowlege); the second and third from the object of knowlege — 
the thing thought about, (the relations of Existence). 

(Besides these necessary and original relations, of which alone 
it is requisite to speak in an alphabet of human thought, there are 
many relations, contingent and derivative, which we frequently 
employ in the actual applications of our cognitive energies. Such 
for example (without arrangement,) as — True and False, Good 
and Bad, Perfect and Imperfect, Easy and Difficult, Desire and 
Aversion, Simple and Complex, Uniform and Various, Singular 
and Universal, Whole and Part, Similar and Dissimilar, Congru- 
ent and Incongruent, Equal and Unequal, Orderly and Disorderly, 
Beautiful and Deformed, Material and Immaterial, .Natural and 
Artificial, Organised and Inorganised, Young and Old, Male and 
Female, Parent and Child, &c. &c. These admit of classification 
from different points of view ; but to attempt their arrangement 
at all, far less on any exclusive principle, would here be manifestly 
out of place.) 

i.) The relations^ of Knowlege are those which arise from the 
reciprocal dependence of the subject and of the object of thought, 



530 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

Self and Not-self, (Ego and Non-ego, — Subjective and Objec- 
tive.) Whatever comes into consciousness, is thought by us, either 
as belonging to the mental self, exclusively, (subjectivo-subjective), 
or as belonging to the not-self, exclusively, (objectivo-objective,) 
or as belonging partly to both, (subjectivo-objective). It is diffi- 
cult, however, to find words to express precisely all the complex 
correlations of knowledge. For in cognizing a mere affection of 
self, we objectify it ; it forms a subject-object or subjective object, 
or subjectivo-subjective object: and how shall we name and discri- 
minate a mode of mind, representative of and relative to a mode 
of matter 1 This difficulty is, however, strictly psychological. In 
so far as we are at present concerned, it is manifest that all these 
cognitions exist for us, only as terms of a correlation. 

The relations of Existence, arising from the object of knowlege, 
are twofold; in as much as the relation is either Intrinsic or 
Extrinsic. 

ii.) As the relation of Existence is Intrinsic, it is that of Sub- 
stance and Quality, (form, accident, property, mode, affection, 
phenomenon, appearance, attribute, predicate, &c. It may be 
called qualitative. 

Substance and Quality are, manifestly, only thought as mu- 
tual relatives. We cannot think a quality existing absolutely, 
in or of itself. We are constrained to think it, as inhering in 
some basis, substratum-, hypostasis, or substance ; but this sub- 
stance cannot be conceived by us, except negatively, that is, as 
the unapparent — the inconceivable correlative of certain appear- 
ing qualities. If we attempt to think it positively, we can think 
it only by transforming it into a quality or bundle of qualities, 
which, again, we are compelled to refer to an unknown substance, 
now supposed for their incogitable basis. Everything, in fact, 
may be conceived as the quality, or as the substance of some- 
thing else. But absolute substance and absolute quality, these 
are both inconceivable, as more than negations of the conceivable. 
It is hardly requisite to observe, that the term Substance is vul- 
garly applied, in the abusive signification, to a congeries of quali- 
ties, denoting those especially which are more permanent, in con- 
trast to those which are more transitory. (See the treatise De 
Mundo, attributed to Aristotle, c. iv.) 

What has now been said, applies equally to Mind and Mattel-. 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 581 

As the relation of Existence is Extrinsic, it is threefold; and as 
constituted by three species of quantity, it may be called quantita- 
tive. It is realised in or by : 1°. Protensive quantity, Protension, or 
Time ; 2°. Extensive quantity, Extension or Space ; 3°. Intensive 
quantity, Intension or Degree. These quantities may be all consi- 
dered, either as Continuous or as Discrete ; and they constitute the 
three last great relations which we have here to signalise. 

hi.) Time, Protension or protensive quantity, called likewise 
Duration, is a necessary condition of thought. It may be consi- 
dered both in itself and in the things which it contains. 

Considered in itself. — Space is positively inconceivable, if we 
attempt to construe it in thought ; — either, on the one hand, as 
absolutely commencing or absolutely terminating, or on the other, 
as infinite or eternal, whether ab ante or a post ; and it is no less 
inconceivable, if we attempt to fix an absolute minimum or to fol- 
low out an infinite division. It is positively conceivable : if con- 
ceived as an indefinite past, present or future ; and as an inde- 
terminate mean between the two unthinkable extremes of an abso- 
lute least and an infinite divisibility. For thus it is relative. 

In regard to Time Past and Time Future there is comparatively 
no difficulty, because these are positively thought as protensive 
quantities. But Time Present, when we attempt to realise it, 
seems to escape us altogether — to vanish into nonentity. The 
present cannot be conceived as of any length, of any quantity, of 
any protension, in short, as any thing positive. It is only con- 
ceivable as a negation, as the point or line (and these are only 
negations) in which the past ends and the future begins, — in 
which they limit each other. 

" Le moment ou je paiie, est deja loin de moi." 
In fact, we are unable to conceive how we do exist ; and, specula- 
tively, we must admit, in its most literal acceptation — " Victuri 
semper, vivimus nunquam." The Eleatic Zeno's demonstration 
of the impossibility of Motion, is not more insoluble than could be 
framed a proof, that the Present has no reality ; for however cer- 
tain we may be of both, we can positively think neither. So true 
is it as said by St Augustin : " What is Time, — if not asked, I 
know ; but attempting to explain, I know not." 

Things in Time are either co-inclusive or co-exclusive. Things 
co-inclusive — if of the same time are, pro tanto, identical, appa- 
rently and in thought ; if of different times, (as causes and effect, 
causcc et causatum,) they appear as different, but are thought as 



582 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

identical. Things co-exclusive are mutually, either prior and pos- 
terior, or contemporaneous. 

The impossibility we experience of thinking negatively or as 
non-existent, non-existent, consequently in time (either past or 
future,) aught, which we have conceived positively or as exist- 
ent, — this impossibility affords the principle of Causality, &c. 
(Specially developed in the sequel.) 

Time applies to both Substance and Quality ; and includes the 
other quantities, Space and Degree. 

iv.) Space, Extension or extensive quantity is, in like manner, 
a necessary condition of thought ; and may also be considered, 
both in itself, and in the things which it contains. 

Considered in itself. — Space is positively inconceivable : — as a 
whole, either infinitely unbounded, or absolutely bounded ; as a 
part, either infinitely divisible, or absolutely indi visible. Space is 
positively conceivable : — as a mean between these extremes ; in 
other words, we can think it either as an indefinite whole, or as 
an indefinite part. For thus it is relative. 

The things contained in Space may be considered, either in 
relation to this form, or in relation to each other. — In relation to 
Space : the extension occupied by a thing is called its place ; and 
a thing changing its place, gives the relation of motion in space, 
space itself being always conceived as immoveable, 

" stabilisque martens dat cuncta raoveri." 

— Considered in relation to each other. Things, spacially , are either 
inclusive, thus originating the relation of containing and con- 
tained ; or co-exclusive, thus determining the relation of position 
or situation — of here and there. 

Space applies, proximately, to things considered as Substance ; 
for the qualities of substances, though they are in, may not 
occupy, space. In fact, it is by a merely modern abuse of the 
term, that the affections of Extension have been styled Qualities. 
It is extremely difficult for the human mind to admit the possi- 
bility of unextended substance. Extension, being a condition of 
positive thinking, clings to all our conceptions ; and it is one 
merit of the philosophy of the Conditioned, that it proves space 
to be only a law of thought, and not a law of things. The diffi- 
culty of thinking, or rather of admitting as possible, the immate- 
riality of the soul, is shown by the tardy and timorous manner in 
which the inextension of the thinking subject was recognised in 
the Christian Church. Some of the earlv Councils and most of 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 583 

the Fathers maintained the extended, while denying the corporeal, 
nature of the spiritual principle ; and, though I cannot allow, that 
Descartes was the first by whom the immateriality of mind was 
fully acknowledged, there can be no doubt, that an assertion of 
the inextension and illocality of the soul, was long and very gene- 
rally eschewed, as tantamount to the assertion, that it was a mere 
nothing. 

On space are dependent what are called the Primary Qualities 
of body, strictly so denominated, and Space combined with Degree 
affords, of body, the Secundo-primary Qualities. (On this dis- 
tinction, see Dissertations on Reid, p. 845 — 853.) 

Our inability to conceive an absolute elimination from space of 
aught, which we have conceived to occupy space, gives the law of 
what I have called Ultimate Incompressibility, &c. (lb. p. 847.) 

v.) Degree, Intension or intensive quantity is not, like Time 
and Space, an absolute condition of thought. Existences are not 
necessarily thought under it ; it does not apply to Substance, but 
to Quality, and that in the more limited acceptation of the word. 
For it does not apply to what have (abusively) been called by 
modern philosophers the Primary Qualities of body ; these being 
merely evolutions of Extension, which, again, is not thought 
under Degree. (Dissertations on Reid, p. 846, sq.) Degree 
may, therefore, be thought as null, or as existing only potentially. 
But thinking it to be, we must think it as a quantity ; and, as a 
quantity, it is positively both inconceivable and conceivable. — 
It is positively inconceivable : absolutely, either as least or as 
greatest ; infinitely, as without limit, either in increase or in 
diminution. — On the contrary, it is positively conceivable ; as in- 
definitely high or higher, as indefinitely low or lower. — The things 
thought under it; if of the same intension are correlatively uniform, 
if of a different degree, are correlatively higher or lower. 

Degree affords the relations of Actuality and Potentiality, — of 
Action and Passion, — of Power active, and Power passive, &c. 

Degree is, likewise, developed into what, in propriety, are 
called the Secondary Qualities of body ; and combined with 
Space, into the Secundo-primary. (lb. p. 853, p. 848, sq.) 

So much for the Conditions of Thinking, in detail. 

If the general doctrine of the Conditioned be correct, it yields 
as a corollary, that Judgment, that Comparison is implied in every 
act of apprehension ; and the fact, that consciousness cannot be 



584 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

realised without an energy of judgment, is, again, a proof of the 
correctness of the theory, asserting the Relativity of Thought. 

The philosophy of the Conditioned even from the preceding 
outline, is, it will be seen, the express converse of the philosophy 
of the Absolute, — at least, as this system has been latterly evolved 
in Germany. For this asserts to man a knowlege of the Uncon- 
ditioned, — of the Absolute and Infinite ; while that denies to him 
a knowlege of either, and maintains, all which we immediately 
know, or can know, to be only the Conditioned, the Relative, the 
Phenomenal, the Finite. The one, supposing knowlege to be 
only of existence in itself, and existence in itself to be appre- 
hended, and even understood, proclaims — " Understand that you 
may believe/' (" Intellige ut credas"); the other, supposing that 
existence, in itself, is unknown, that apprehension is only of 
phenomena, and that these are received only upon trust, as 
incomprehensibly revealed facts, proclaims, with the Prophet, — 
" Believe that ye may understand," (" Crede ut intelligas." 
Is. vii. 9, sec. lxx.) — But extremes meet. In one respect, both 
coincide ; for both agree, that the knowlege of Nothing is the 
principle or result of all true philosophy : — 

" Scire Nihi\ — studium, quo nos laetamur utrique." 
But the one doctrine, openly maintaining that the Nothing must 
yield every thing, is a philosophic omniscience; whereas the other, 
holding that Nothing can yield nothing, is a philosophic nescience. 
In other words : — the doctrine of the Unconditioned is a philo- 
sophy confessing relative ignorance, but professing absolute know- 
lege ; while the doctrine of the Conditioned is a philosophy pro- 
fessing relative knowlege, but confessing absolute ignorance. Thus, 
touching the Absolute : the watchword of the one is, — " Noscendo 
cognoscitur, ignorando ignoratur ;" the watchword of the other is, 
— " Noscendo ignoratur, ignorando cognoscitur." 

But which is true ? — To answer this, we need only to examine 
our own consciousness ; there shall we recognise the limited 
" extent of our tether." 

" Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi carta supellex." 
But this one requisite is fulfilled (alas !) by few ; and the same 
philosophic poet has to. lament : — 

" Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, — nemo ; 
Sed praecedenti spectator mantica tergo ! " 

To manifest the utility of introducing the principle of the Con- 



CAUSALITY. 585 

ditioned into our metaphysical speculations, I shall (always in 
outline) give one only, but a signal illustration of its importance. 
— Of all questions in the history of philosophy, that concerning 
the origin of our judgment of Cause and Effect is, perhaps, the 
most celebrated ; but, strange to say, there is not, so far as I am 
aware, to be found a comprehensive view of the various theories, 
proposed in explanation, not to say, among these, any satisfactory 
explanation of the phenomenon itself. 

The phenomenon is this : — When aware of a new appearance, 
we are unable to conceive that therein has originated any new 
existence, and are, therefore, constrained to think, that what now 
appears to us under a new form, had previously an existence 
under others. These others (for they are always plural) are 
called its cause ; and a cause (or more properly causes) we cannot 
but suppose ; for a cause is simply everything without which the 
effect would not result, and all such concurring, the effect cannot 
but result. We are utterly unable to construe it in thought as 
possible, that the complement of existence has been either increased 
or diminished. We cannot conceive, either, on the one hand, 
nothing becoming something, or, on the other, something becoming 
nothing. When God is said to create the universe out of nothing, 
we think this, by supposing, that he evolves the universe out of 
himself; and, in like manner, we conceive annihilation, only by 
conceiving the creator to withdraw his creation from actuality into 
power. 

" Nil posse creari 

De Nihilo, neque quod genitu 'st ad Nil revocari ; " 

" Gigni 

De Nihilo Nihil, in Nihilum Nil posse revert! : " — 

— these lines of Lucretius and Persius enounce a physical axiom 
of antiquity ; which, when interpreted by the doctrine of the Con- 
ditioned, is itself at once recalled to harmony with revealed truth, 
and expressing, in its purest form, the conditions of human thought, 
expresses also, implicitly, the whole intellectual phenomenon of 
causality. 

The mind is thus compelled to recognise an absolute identity 
of existence in the effect and in the complement of its causes, — 
between the causatum and the causa. We think the causes to 
contain all that is contained in the effect ; the effect to contain 
nothing but what is contained in the causes. Each is the sum of 
the other. " Omnia mutantur, nihil interit" is what we think, 



5S6 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

what we must think ; nor can the change itself be thought without 
a cause. Our judgment of causality simply is : — We necessarily 
deny in thought, that the object which we apprehend as begin- 
ning to be, really so begins ; but, on the contrary, affirm, as we 
must, the identity of its present sum of being, with the sum of its 
past existence. — And here, it is not requisite for us to know, 
under what form, under what combination this quantum previously 
existed ; in other words, it is unnecessary for us to recognise the 
particular causes of this particular effect. A discovery of the 
determinate antecedents into which a determinate consequent 
may be refunded, is merely contingent, — merely the result of 
experience ; but the judgment, that every event should have its 
causes, is necessary, and imposed on us, as a condition of our 
human intelligence itself. This necessity of so thinking, is the 
only phenomenon to be explained. 

Now, throwing out of account the philosophers who, like Dr 
Thomas Brown,* quietly eviscerate the problem of its sole diffi- 
culty, and enumerating only the theories which do not accommo- 
date the phenomenon to be explained to their attempts at expla- 
nation, — these are, in all, seven. 

1°, — And, in the first place, they fall into two supreme classes. 
The one (A) comprehends those theories which consider the causal 
judgment as adventitious, empirical, or a posteriori, that is, as 
derived from experience; the other (B) comprehends those which 
view it as native, pure, or a priori, that is, as a condition of intel- 
ligence itself. — The two primary genera are, however, severally 
subdivided into various species. 

2°, — The former class (A) falls into two subordinates; in as 
much as the judgment is viewed as founded either on an original 
(a) or on a derivative (b) cognition. 

3°, — Each of these is finally distributed into two ; according as 
the judgment is supposed to have an objective or a subjective ori- 
gin. In the former case (a) it is objective, perhaps objeetivo- 
objective, (1) when held to consist in an immediate apprehension 
of the efficiency of causes in the external and internal worlds : 
and subjective, or rather subjectivo-objective, (2) when viewed as 
given through a self-consciousness alone of the efficiency of our 
own volitions. — In the latter case (b) it is regarded, if objective 

* The fundamental vice of Dr Brown's theory has been, with great acnte- 
ness, exposed by his successor, Professor Wilson. (See Blackwood's Maga- 
zine, July L886, vol. xl., p. 122. sq.) 



CAUSALITY. 587 

(3), as a product of induction and generalisation ; if subjective (4), 
as a result of association and custom. 

4°, — In like manner, the latter supreme class (B) is divided 
into two, according as the opinions under it, view in the causal 
judgment, a law of thought : — either ultimate, primary (c) ; or 
secondary, derived (d). 

5°, — It is a corollary of the former doctrine (c), (which is not 
subdivided,) that the judgment is a positive act, an affirmative 
deliverance of intelligence (5). — The latter doctrine (d), on the 
other hand, considers the judgment as of a negative character ; 
and is subdivided into two, For some maintain that the principle 
of causality may be resolved into the principle of Contradiction, 
or, more properly, non-contradiction (6) ; whilst, though not pre- 
viously attempted, it may be argued that the judgment of causality 
is a derivation from the Condition of Relativity in Time (7). 

First and Second theories. — Of these seven opinions, the first 
has always been held in combination with the second ; whereas, 
the second has been frequently held by those who abandon the first. 
Considering them together, that is, as the opinion, that we imme- 
diately apprehend the efficiency of causes external or internal ; — 
this is obnoxious to two fatal objections. 

The first is, — that we have no such apprehension, no such 
experience. It is now, indeed, universally admitted, that we have 
no perception of the causal nexus in the material world. Hume it 
was, who decided the opinion of philosophers upon this point. But 
though he advances his refutation of the vulgar doctrine as original, 
he was, in fact, herein only the last of a long series of metaphysi- 
cians, some of whom had even maintained their thesis not less lucidly 
than the Scottish sceptic. I cannot indeed believe, that Hume 
could have been ignorant of the anticipation. — But whilst surren- 
dering the first, there are many philosophers who still adhere to the 
second opinion ;— a theory which has been best stated and most 
strenuously supported by the late M. Maine de Biran, one of the 
acutest metaphysicians of France. I will to move my arm, and I 
move it. When we analyse this phenomenon, says De Biran, 
the following are the results : — 1°, the consciousness of an act of 
will ; 2°, the consciousness of a motion produced ; 3°, the con- 
sciousness of a relation of the motion to the volition. And what 
is this relation ? Not one of simple succession. The will is not 
for us an act without efficiency ; it is a productive energy ; so 
that, in a volition, there is given to us the notion of cause ; and 



588 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

this notion we subsequently project out from our internal activities 
into the changes of the external world. — But the empirical fact, 
here asserted, is incorrect. For between the overt fact of corpo- 
real movement, which we perceive, and the internal act of the 
will to move, of which we are self-conscious, there intervenes a 
series of intermediate agencies, of which we are wholly unaware ; 
consequently, we can have no consciousness, as this hypothesis 
maintains, of any causal connection between the extreme links of 
this chain, that is, between the volition to move and the arm 
moving. (See Dissertations on Reid, p. 866.) 

But independently of this, the second objection is fatal to the 
theory which would found the judgment of causality on any empi- 
rical apprehension whether of the phsenomena of mind or of the 
phsenomena of matter. Admitting the causal efficiency to be 
cognisable, and perception with self-consciousness to be competent 
for its apprehension, still as these faculties can inform us only of 
individual causations, the quality of necessity and consequent 
universality by which this judgment is characterised remains 
wholly unexplained. (See Cousin on Locke.) So much for the 
two theories at the head of our enumeration. 

As the first and second opinions have been usually associated, 
so also have been the third and fourth. 

Third theory. — In regard to the third opinion, it is manifest, 
that the observation of certain phsenomena succeeding certain 
other phsenomena, and the generalisation, consequent thereon, 
that these are reciprocally causes and effect, — it is manifest that 
this could never of itself have engendered, not only the strong, 
but the irresistible, conviction, that every event must have its 
causes. Each of these observations is contingent, and any num- 
ber of observed contingencies will never impose upon us the con- 
sciousness of necessity, that is the consciousness of an inability to 
think the opposite. This theory is thus logically absurd. For it 
would infer as a conclusion, the universal necessity of the causal 
judgment, from a certain number of actual consecutions ; that is, 
it would collect that all must be, because some are. Logically 
absurd, it is also psychologically false. For we find no difficulty 
in conceiving the converse of one or of all observed consecutions ; 
and yet, the causal judgment which, ex hypothesi, is only the 
result of these observations, we cannot possibly think, as possibly 
unreal. We have always seen a stone returning to the ground 
when thrown into the air; but we find no difficulty in represent- 



CAUSALITY. 589 

ing to ourselves some or all stones rising from the earth ; nay, we 
can easily suppose even gravitation itself to be reversed. Only, 
we are unable to conceive the possibility of this or of any other 
event, — without a cause. 

Fourth opinion. — Nor does the fourth theory afford a better 
solution. The necessity of so thinking, cannot be derived from a 
custom of so thinking. The force of custom, influential as it may 
be, is still always limited to the customary ; and the customary 
never reaches, never even approaches, to the necessary. Associa- 
tion may explain a strong and special, but it can never explain a 
universal and absolutely irresistible belief. — On this theory, also, 
when association is recent, the causal judgment should be weak, 
and rise only gradually into full force, as custom becomes inve- 
terate. But we do not find that this judgment is feebler in 
the young, stronger in the old. In neither case, is there less and 
more ; in both cases the necessity is complete. — Mr Hume patron- 
ized the opinion, that the causal judgment is an offspring of expe- 
rience engendered upon custom. But those have a sorry insight 
into the philosophy of that great thinker who suppose, like Brown, 
that this was a dogmatic theory of his own, or one considered 
satisfactory by himself. On the contrary, in his hands it was a 
reduction of the prevalent dogmatism to palpable absurdity, by 
shewing out the inconsistency of its results. To the Lockian 
sensualism, Hume proposed the problem, — to account for the 
phenomenon of necessity in our thought of the causal nexus. 
That philosophy afforded no other principle than the custom of 
experience, through which even the attempt at a solution could 
be made ; and the principle of custom Hume shews could never 
account for the product of any real necessity. The alternative 
was plain. Either the doctrine of sensualism is false ; or our 
nature is a delusion. Shallow thinkers admitted the latter alter- 
native, and were lost ; profound thinkers, on the contrary, were 
determined to build philosophy on a deeper foundation than that 
of the superficial edifice of Locke : and thus it is, that Hume has, 
immediately or mediately, been the cause or the occasion of what- 
ever is of principal value in the subsequent speculations of Scot- 
land, Germany, and France. 

Fifth theory. — In regard to the second supreme genus (B), 
the first of the three opinions which it contains, (the fifth in ge- 
neral,) maintains that the causal judgment is a primary datum, 
a positive revelation of intelligence. To this are to be referred 



590 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

the relative theories of Leibnitz, Reid, Kant, Stewart, Cousin, and 
the majority of recent philosophers. To this class Brown likewise 
belongs ; in as much as he idly refers what remains in his hands 
of the evacuated phenomenon to an original belief. 

Without descending to details, it is manifest in general, that 
against the assumption of a special principle, which this doctrine 
makes, there exists a primary presumption of philosophy. This 
is the law of parsimony ; which prohibits, without a proven neces- 
sity, the multiplication of entities, powers, principles or causes; 
above all, the postulation of an unknown force where a known 
impotence can account for the phenomenon. We are, therefore, 
entitled to apply " Occam's razor" to this theory of causality, 
unless it be proved impossible to explain the causal judgment at a 
cheaper rate, by deriving it from a common, and that a negative, 
principle. On a doctrine like the present, is thrown the burthen 
of vindicating its necessity, by shewing that unless a special and 
positive principle be assumed, there exists no competent mode to 
save the phenomenon. The opinion can therefore only be admit- 
ted provisorily ; and it falls, of course, if what it would explain 
can be explained on less onerous conditions. 

Leaving, therefore, this theory, which certainly does account 
for the phenomenon, to fall or stand, according as either of the 
two remaining opinions be, or be not, found sufficient, I go on to 
this consideration. 

Sixth opinion. — Of these, the former, that is the sixth theory, 
has been long exploded. It attempts to establish the causal judg- 
ment upon the principle of Contradiction. Leibnitz was too acute 
a metaphysician to attempt the resolution of the principle of Suf- 
ficient Reason or Causality, which is ampliative or synthetic, into 
the principle of Contradiction, which is merely explicative or 
analytic. But. his followers were not so wise. Wolf, Baum- 
garten, and many other Leibnitians, paraded demonstrations of 
the law of Sufficient Reason on the ground of the law of 
Contradiction ; but the reasoning always proceeds on a covert 
assumption of the very point in question. The same argument is, 
however, at an earlier date, to be found in Locke, while modifica- 
tions of it are also given by Hobbes and Samuel Clarke. Hume, 
who was only aware of the demonstration, as proposed by the 
English metaphysicians, honours it with a refutation which has 
obtained even the full approval of Reid ; whilst by foreign philo- 
sophers, the inconsequence of the reduction, at the hands of the 



CAUSALITY 591 

Wolfian metaphysicians, has frequently been exposed. I may 
therefore pass it in silence. 

Seventh opinion. — The field is thus open for the last theory, 
which would analyse the judgment of causality into a form of the 
mental law of the Conditioned. This theory, which has not 
hitherto been proposed, comes recommended by its cheapness and 
simplicity. It postulates no new, no express, no positive principle. 
It merely supposes that the mind is limited ; the law of limita- 
tion, — the law of the Conditioned constituting, in one of its appli- 
cations, the law of Causality. The mind is astricted to think in 
certain forms ; and, under these, thought is possible only in the 
conditioned interval between two unconditioned contradictory 
extremes or poles, each of which is altogether inconceivable, but 
of which, on the principle of Excluded Middle, the one or the 
other is necessarily true. In reference to the present question, 
it need only be recapitulated, that we must think under the con- 
dition of Existence, — Existence Relative, — and Existence Rela- 
tive in Time. But what does existence relative in time imply ? 
It implies, 1°, that we are unable to realise in thought : on the 
one pole of the irrelative, either an absolute commencement, or 
an absolute termination of time ; as on the other, either an infinite 
non-commencement, or an infinite non- termination of time. It 
implies, 2°, That we can think, neither, on the one pole, an abso- 
lute minimum, nor, on the other, an infinite divisibility of time. 
Yet these constitute two pairs of contradictory propositions ; which, 
if our intelligence be not all a lie, cannot both be true, whilst, 
at the same time, either the one or the other necessarily must. 
But, as not relatives, they are not cogitables. 

Now the phenomenon of causality seems nothing more than a 
corollary of the law of the conditioned, in its application to a 
thing thought under the form or mental category of existence 
relative in time We cannot know, we cannot think a thing, 
except under the attribute of existence ; we cannot know or think 
a thing to exist, except as in time ; and we cannot know or think 
a thing to exist in time, and think it absolutely to commence. 
Now this at once imposes on us the judgment of causality. And 
thus : — An object is given us, either by our presentative, or by 
our representative, faculty. As given, we cannot but think it 
existent, and existent in time. But to say, that we cannot but 
think it to exist, is to say, that we are unable to think it non- 
existent, — to think it away, — to annihilate it in thought. And 



592 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

this we cannot do. We may turn away from it ; we may engross 
our attention with other objects ; we may, consequently, exclude 
it from our thought. That we need not think a thing is certain ; 
but thinking it, it is equally certain that we cannot think it not 
to exist. So much will be at once admitted of the present ; but 
it may probably be denied of the past and future. Yet if we 
make the experiment, we shall find the mental annihilation of an 
object, equally impossible under time past, and present, and 
future. To obviate, however, misapprehension, a very simple 
observation may be proper. In saying that it is impossible to 
annihilate an object in thought, in other words, to conceive as 
non-existent, what had been conceived as existent, — it is of course 
not meant, that it is impossible to imagine the object wholly 
changed in form. We can represent to ourselves the ele- 
ments of which it is composed, divided, dissipated, modified in 
any way ; we can imagine anything of it, short of annihila- 
tion. But the complement, the quantum, of existence, thought 
as constituent of an object, — that we cannot represent to our- 
selves, either as increased, without abstraction from other enti- 
ties, or as diminished, without annexation to them. In short, 
we are unable to construe it in thought, that there can be an 
atom absolutely added to, or absolutely taken away from, 
existence in general. Let us make the experiment. Let us 
form to ourselves a concept of the universe. Now, we are unable 
to think, that the quantity of existence, of which the universe is 
the conceived sum, can either be amplified or diminished. We 
are able to conceive, indeed, the creation of a world ; this indeed 
as easily as the creation of an atom. But what is our thought of 
creation ? It is not a thought of the mere springing of nothing 
into something. On the contrary, creation is conceived, and is by 
us conceivable, only as the evolution of existence from possibility 
into actuality, by the fiat of the deity. Let us place ourselves in 
imagination at its very crisis. Now, can we construe it to thought, 
that the moment after the universe flashed into material reality, 
into manifested being, that there was a larger complement of 
existence in the universe and its author together, than, the moment 
before, there subsisted in the deity alone? This we are unable to 
imagine. And what is true of our concept of creation, holds of 
our concept of annihilation. We can think no real annihilation. — 
no absolute sinking of something into nothing. But. as creation 
is cogitable by us, only as a putting forth of divine power, so is 



CAUSALITY. 593 

annihilation by us only conceivable, as a withdrawal of that same 
power. All that is now actually existent in the universe, this we 
think and must think, as having, prior to creation, virtually 
existed in the creator ; and in imagining the universe to be anni- 
hilated, we can only conceive this, as the retractation by the deity 
of an overt energy into latent power. — In short, it is impossible 
for the human mind to think what it thinks existent, lapsing into 
non-existence, either in time past or in time future. 

Our inability to think, what we have once conceived existent in 
time, as in time becoming non-existent, corresponds with our inabi- 
lity to think, what we have conceived existent in space, as in space 
becoming non-existent. We cannot realise it to thought, that a 
thing should be extruded, either from the one quantity or from 
the other. Hence, under extension, the law of ultimate incom- 
pressibility ; under protension, the law of cause and effect, 

I have hitherto spoken only of one inconceivable pole of the 
conditioned, in its application to existence in time, of the absolute 
extreme, as absolute commencement and absolute termination. 
The counter or infinite extreme, as infinite regress or non-com- 
mencement, and infinite progress or non-termination, is equally 
unthinkable. With this latter we have, however, at present 
nothing to do. Indeed, as not obtrusive, the Infinite figures far less 
in the theatre of mind, and exerts a far inferior influence in the 
modification of thought, than the Absolute. It is, in fact, both 
distant and delitescent ; and in place of meeting us at every turn, 
it requires some exertion on our part to seek it out. It is the for- 
mer and more obtrusive extreme, — it is the Absolute alone which 
constitutes and explains the mental manifestation of the causal 
judgment. An object is presented to our observation which has 
phenomenally begun to be. But we cannot construe it to thought, 
that the object, that is, this determinate complement of existence, 
had really no being at any past moment ; because, in that case, 
once thinking it as existent, we should again think it as non-exist- 
tent, which is for us impossible. What then can we — must we 
do ? That the phenomenon presented to us, did, as a pheno- 
menon, begin to be, — this we know by experience ; but that the 
elements of its existence only began, when the phenomenon which 
they constitute came into manifested being, — this we are wholly 
unable to think. In these circumstances how do we proceed? 
There is for us only one possible way. We are compelled to 
believe, that the object, (that is the certain quale and quantum of 

2p 



594 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

being), whose phcenomenal rise into existence we have witnessed, 
did really exist, prior to this rise, under other forms. But to say, 
that a thing previously existed under different forms, is only to 
say, in other words, that a thing had causes. (It would be here 
out of place, to refute the error of philosophers, in supposing that 
any thing can have a single cause ; — meaning always by a cause 
that without which the effect would not have been. I speak of 
course only of second causes, for of the divine causation we can 
form no conception). 

I must, however, now cursorily observe, that nothing can be 
more erroneous in itself, or in its consequences more fertile in 
delusion, than the common doctrine, that the causal judgment is 
elicited, only when we apprehend objects in consecution, and uni- 
form consecution. No doubt, the observation of such succession 
prompts and enables us to assign particular causes to particular 
effects. But this assignation ought to be carefully distinguished 
from the judgment of causality, absolutely. This consists, not 
in the empirical and contingent attribution of this phenomenon, 
as cause, to that phenomenon, as effect; but in the universal 
necessity of which we are conscious, to think causes for every event, 
whether that event stand isolated by itself, and be by us referable 
to no other, or whether it be one in a series of successive pheno- 
mena, which, as it were, spontaneously arrange themselves under 
the relation of effect and cause. On this, not sunken, rock, Dr 
Brown and others have been shipwrecked. 

The preceding doctrine of causality seems to me the one pre- 
ferable, for the following among other reasons. 

In the first place, to explain the phenomenon of the causal 
judgment, it postulates no new, no extraordinary, no express 
principle. It does not even proceed on the assumption of a posi- 
tive power ; for while it shews, that the phenomenon in question 
is only one of a class, it assigns, as their common cause, only a 
negative impotence. In this respect, it stands advantageously 
contrasted with the only other theory which saves the pheno- 
menon, but which saves it, only on the hypothesis of a special 
principle, expressly devised to account for this phenomenon 
alone. But nature never works by more, and more complex, 
instruments than are necessary, — ^Ih Tn^rrug : and to excogitate 
a particular force, to perform what can be better explained on 
the ground of a general imbecillity, is contrary to every rule of 
philosophising. 



CAUSALITY. 595 

But, in the second place, if there be postulated an express and 
positive affirmation of intelligence, to account for the mental 
deliverance, — that existence cannot absolutely commence ; we 
must equally postulate a counter affirmation of intelligence, posi- 
tive and express, to explain the counter mental deliverance, — 
that existence cannot infinitely not commence. The one necessity 
of mind is equally strong as the other ; and, if the one be a posi- 
tive datum, an express testimony of intelligence, so likewise must 
be the other. But they are contradictories ; and, as contradic- 
tories, they cannot both be true. On this theory, therefore, the 
root of our nature is a lie. By the doctrine, on the contrary, 
which I propose, these contradictory phenomena are carried up 
into the common principle of a limitation of our faculties. Intel- 
ligence is shewn to be feeble, but not false ; our nature is, thus, 
not a lie, nor the author of our nature a deceiver. 

In the third place, this simpler and easier doctrine, avoids a 
most serious inconvenience which attaches to the more difficult 
and complex. It is this. To suppose a positive and special prin- 
ciple of causality, is to suppose that there is expressly revealed 
to us, through intelligence, an affirmation of the fact, that there 
exists no free causation ; that is, that there is no cause which is 
not itself merely an effect, existence being only a series of deter- 
mined antecedents and determined consequents. But this is an 
assertion of Fatalism. Such, however, many of the partisans of 
that doctrine will not admit. An affirmation of absolute necessity 
is, they are aware, virtually the negation of a moral universe, 
consequently of the moral governor of a moral universe. But 
this is Atheism. Fatalism and Atheism are, indeed, convertible 
terms. The only valid arguments for the existence of a God, and 
for the immortality of the human soul, rest on the ground of man's 
moral nature ; consequently, if that moral nature be annihilated, 
which in any scheme of thoroughgoing necessity it is, every 
conclusion, established on such a nature, is annihilated likewise. 
Aware of this, some of those who make the judgment of causality 
a positive dictate of intelligence, find themselves compelled, in 
order to escape from the consequences of their doctrine, to deny 
that this dictate, though universal in its deliverance, should be 
allowed to hold universally true ; and accordingly, they would 
exempt from it the facts of volition. Will, they hold to be a free 
cause, a cause which is not an effect ; in other words, they attri- 
bute to it the power of absolute origination. But here their own 



596 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

principle of causality is too strong for them. They say, that it 
is unconditionally promulgated, as an express and positive law of 
intelligence, that every origination is an apparent only, not a real, 
commencement. Now to exempt certain phenomena from this 
universal law, on the ground of our moral consciousness, cannot 
validly be done. — For, in the first place, this would be an admis- 
sion, that the mind is a complement of contradictory revelations. 
If mendacity be admitted of some of our mental dictates, we can- 
not vindicate veracity to any. If one be delusive, so may all. 
" Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus," Absolute scepticism is here 
the legitimate conclusion. — But, in the second place, waving this 
conclusion, what right have we, on this doctrine, to subordinate 
the positive affirmation of causality to our consciousness of moral 
liberty, — what right have we, for the interest of the latter, to 
derogate from the former ? We have none. If both be equally 
positive, we are not entitled to sacrifice the alternative, which our 
wishes prompt us to abandon. 

But the doctrine which I propose is not obnoxious to these 
objections. It does not maintain, that the judgment of causality 
is dependent on a power of the mind, imposing, as necessary in 
thought, what is necessary in the universe of existence. On the con- 
trary, it resolves this judgment into a mere mental impotence, — an 
impotence to conceive either of two contradictories. And as the 
one or the other of contradictories must be true, whilst both cannot ; 
it proves, that there is no ground for inferring a certain fact to be 
impossible, merely from our inability to conceive it possible. At the 
same time, if the causal judgment be not an express affirmation of 
mind, but only an incapacity of thinking the opposite ; it follows, 
that such a negative judgment cannot counterbalance the express 
affirmative, the unconditional testimony, of consciousness, — that wc 
are, though we know not how, the true and responsible authors of 
our actions, nor merely the worthless links in an adamantine series 
of effects and causes. It appears to me, that it is only on such a 
doctrine, that we can philosophically vindicate the liberty of the 
human will, — that we can rationally assert to mam — " fatis avolsa 
voluntas. " How the will can possibly be free, must remain to us, 
under the present limitation of our faculties, wholly incomprehen- 
sible. We are unable to conceive an absolute commencement ; 
we cannot, therefore, conceive a free volition. A determination 
by motives cannot, to our understanding, escape from necessita- 
tion. Nay, were we even to admit as true, what we cannot think 



CAUSALITY. 507 

as possible, still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would be 
only casualism ; and the free acts of an indifferent, are, morally 
and rationally, as worthless as the pre-ordered passions of a deter- 
mined, will. How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in 
man or God, we are utterly unable speculatively to understand. 
But practically, the fact, that we are free, is given to us in the 
consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty, in the con- 
sciousness of our moral accountability ; and this fact of liberty 
cannot be redargued on the ground that it is incomprehensible, 
for the philosophy of the conditioned proves, against the neces- 
sitarian, that things there are, which may, nay must be true, of 
which the understanding is wholly unable to construe to itself the 
possibility. 

But this philosophy is not only competent to defend the fact of 
our moral liberty, possible though inconceivable, against the 
assault of the fatalist; it retorts against himself the very objec- 
tion of incomprehensibility by which the fatalist had thought to 
triumph over the libertarian. It shews, that the scheme of free- 
dom is not more inconceivable than the scheme of necessity. For 
whilst fatalism is a recoil from the more obtrusive inconceivability 
of an absolute commencement, on the fact of which commence- 
ment the doctrine of liberty proceeds ; the fatalist is shewn to 
overlook the equal, but less unobtrusive, inconceivability of an 
infinite non-commencement, on the assertion of which non-com- 
mencement his own doctrine of necessity must ultimately rest. 
As equally unthinkable, the two counter, the two one-sided, 
schemes are thus theoretically balanced. But practically, our 
consciousness of the moral law, which, without a moral liberty in 
man, would be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive prepon- 
derance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of fate. We 
are free in act, if we are accountable for our actions. 

Such ((puueiuTcc ovusrolaiv) are the hints of an undeveloped philoso- 
phy, which, I am confident, is founded upon truth. To this confi- 
dence I have come, not merely through the convictions of my own 
consciousness, but by finding in this system a centre and concilia- 
tion for the most opposite of philosophical opinions. Above all, 
however, I am confirmed in my belief, by the harmony between 
the doctrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed truth. 
" Credo equidem, nee vana fides." The philosophy of the Condi- 
tioned is indeed preeminently a discipline of humility ; a " learned 
ignorance," directly opposed to the false " knowlege which puffeth 



598 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

up." I may indeed say with St Chrysostom : — " The founda- 
tion of our philosophy is humility." — (Homil. de Perf. Evang.) 
For it is professedly a scientific demonstration of the impossibility 
of that " wisdom in high matters" which the Apostle prohibits us 
even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the 
human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, how- 
ever, we must admit, to shew articulately why the " secret things 
of God" cannot but be to man " past finding out." Humility thus 
becomes the cardinal virtue, not only of revelation but of 
reason. This scheme proves moreover, that no difficulty emerges 
in theology, which had not previously emerged in philosophy ; 
that, in fact, if the divine do not transcend what it has pleased 
the Deity to reveal, and wilfully identify the doctrine of God's 
word with some arrogant extreme of human speculation, philoso- 
phy will be found the most useful auxiliary of theology. For a 
world of false, and pestilent, and presumptuous reasoning, by 
which philosophy and theology are now equally discredited, 
would be at once abolished, in the recognition of this rule of pru- 
dent nescience ; nor could it longer be too justly said of the code 
of consciousness, as by reformed divines it has been acknowledged 
of the Bible : — 

" This is the book, where each his dogma seeks ; 
And this the book, where each his dogma finds." 

Specially ; in its doctrine of causality this philosophy brings us 
back from the aberrations of modern theology, to the truth and 
simplicity of the more ancient church. Tt is here shewn to be as 
irrational as irreligious, on the ground of human understanding, 
to deny, either, on the one hand, the foreknowledge, predestina- 
tion, and free grace of God, or, on the other, the free will of man ; 
that we should believe both, and both in unison, though unable to 
comprehend either even apart. This philosophy proclaims with 
St Augustin, and Augustin in his maturest writings : — " If there 
be not free grace in God, how can He save the world ; and if 
there be not free will in man, how can the world by God be 
judged?" (Ad Valentinum, Epist. 214). Or, as the same doc- 
trine is perhaps expressed even better by St Bernard: — " Abolish 
free will, and there is nothing to be saved ; abolish free grace, 
and there is nothing wherewithal to save." (De Gratia et Libero 
Arbitrio. c. -i.) St Austin repeatedly declares, the conciliation of 
the foreknowledge, predestination, and free grace of God with the 
free will of man, to be " a most difficult question, intelligible only 



CAUSALITY. 599 

to a few." Had he denounced it as a fruitless question, and (to 
understanding) soluble by none, the world might have been spared 
a large library of acrimonious and resultless disputation. This 
conciliation is of the things to be believed, not understood. The 
futile attempts to harmonise these antilogies, by human reasoning 
to human understanding, have originated conflictive systems of 
theology, divided the Church, and, as far as possible, dishonoured 
religion. It must however be admitted, that confessions of the 
total inability of man to conceive the union, of what he should 
believe united, are to be found ; and they are found, not, perhaps, 
less frequently, and certainly in more explicit terms among Catho- 
lic than among Protestant theologians. 

Of the former, I shall adduce only one testimony, by a prince 
of the Church ; and it is the conclusion of what, though wholly 
overlooked, appears to me as the ablest and truest criticism of the 
many fruitless, if not futile, attempts at conciliating " the ways of 
God " to the understanding of man, in the great articles of divine 
foreknowledge and predestination (which are both embarrassed by 
the self same difficulties,) and human free-will. It is the testi- 
mony of Cardinal Cajetan, and from his commentary on the 
Summa Theologiae of Aquinas. The criticism itself I may take 
another opportunity of illustrating. 

" Thus elevating our mental eye to a loftier range, [we may suppose that] 
God, from an excellence supernally transcending human thought, so foresees 
events and things, that from his providence something higher follows than 
evitability or inevitability, and that his passive prevision of the event does 
not determine the alternative of either combination. And can we do so, the 
intellect is quieted; not by the evidence of the truth known, but by the 
inaccessible heighth of the truth concealed. And this to my poor intellect 
seems satisfactory enough, both for the reason above stated, and because, as 
Saint Gregory expresses it, ' The man has a low opinion of God, who believes 
of Him only so much as can be measured by human understanding.' Not 
that we should deny aught, that we have by knowledge or by faith of the 
immutability, actuality, certainty, universality, and similar attributes of 
God ; but I suspect that there is something here lying hid, either as regards the 
relation between the Deity and event foreseen, or as regards the connection 
between the event itself and its prevision. Thus, reflecting that the intelli- 
gence of man [in such matters,] is as the eye of the owl [in the blaze of 
day, (he refers to Aristotle,)] I find its repose in ignorance alone. For it is 
more consistent, both with Catholic faith and with philosophy, to confess 
our blindness, than to assert, as things evident, what afford no tranquillity 
to the intellect ; for evidence is tranquillising. Not that I would, therefore, 
accuse all the doctors of presumption ; because, stammering, as they could, 
they have all intended to insinuate, with God's immutability, the supreme 



600 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

and eternal efficiency of His intellect, and will, and power, — through the 
infallible relation between the Divine election and whatever comes to pass. 
Nothing of all this is opposed to the foresaid suspicion — that something too 
deep for us lies hid herein. And assuredly, if it were thus promulgated, no 
Christian would en* in the matter of Predestination, as no one errs in the 
doctrine of the Trinity ; * because of the Trinity the truth is declared orally 
and in writing, — that this is a mystery concealed from human intellect, and 
to which faith alone is competent. Indeed, the best and most wholesome 
counsel in this matter is : — To begin with those things which we certainly 
know, and have experience of in ourselves ; to wit, that all proceeding from 
our free-will may or may not be performed by us, and therefore are we 
amenable to punishment or reward ; but how, this being saved, there shall 
be saved the providence, predestination, &c, of God,— to believe what holy 
mother Church believes. For it is written, ' Altiora te ne quaesieris ' (' Be 
not wise in things above thee') ; there being many things revealed to man, 
above thy human comprehension. And this is one of those." (Pars I. 
qu. xxii., art. 4.) 

Averments to a similar effect, might be adduced from the writ- 
ings of Calvin; and, certainly, nothing can be conceived more 
contrary to the doctrine of that great divine, than what has lat- 
terly been promulgated as Calvinism, (and, in so far as I know, 
without reclamation,) in our Calvinistic Church of Scotland. For 
it has been here promulgated, as the dogma of this Church, by 
pious and distinguished theologians, that man has no will, agency, 
moral personality of his own, God being the only real agent in 
every apparent act of his creatures ; — in short, (though quite the 
opposite was intended,) that the theological scheme of the absolute 
decrees implies fatalism, pantheism, the negation of a moral gover- 
nor, and of a moral world. For the premises, "arbitrarily assumed, 
are atheistic ; the conclusion, illogically drawn, is Christian. 
Against such a view of Calvin's doctrine, I for one must humbly 
though solemnly protest, as not only false in philosophy, but 
heterodox and ignorant in theology. 

* This was written before 1507 ; consequently long before Servetus and 
Campanus had introduced their unitarian heresies. 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 601 



(B.) PHILOSOPHICAL TESTIMONIES 

TO THE LIMITATION OF OUR KNOWLEGE, FROM 

THE LIMITATION OF OUR FACULTIES. 

These, which might be indefinitely multiplied, I shall arrange 
under three heads. I omit the Sceptics, adducing only specimens 
from the others. 

I. Testimonies to the general fact, that the highest Tcnowlege is 
a consciousness of ignorance. 

There are two sorts of ignorance : we philosophise to escape 
ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance ; 
we start from the one, we repose in the other ; they are the goals 
from which, and to which, we tend ; and the pursuit of knowlege 
is but a course between two ignorances, as human life is itself only 
a travelling from grave to grave. 

"'T/j &io$ ; — 'Ex rvpQoto dogai/, stti rvfi&ov obeva." 

The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of 
human ignorance ; " Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire." This 
" learned ignorance " is the rational conviction by the human 
mind of its inability to transcend certain limits ; it is the know- 
ledge of ourselves, — the science of man. This is accomplished by 
a demonstration of the disproportion between what is to be known, 
and our faculties of knowing, — the disproportion, to wit, between 
the infinite and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human 
ignorance, is not only the one highest, but the one true, know- 
lege; and its first-fruit, as has been said, is humility. Simple 
nescience is not proud ; consummated science is positively humble. 
For this knowlege it is not, which " puffeth up ; " but its opposite, 
the conceit of false knowlege, — the conceit, in truth, as the Apostle 
notices, of an ignorance of the very nature of knowlege : 
" Nam nesciens quid scire sit, 
Te scire cuncta jactitas." 

But as our knowlege stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to 
Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to 
know ; for as it is true, — " Alte dubitat qui altius credit," so it is 
likewise true, — " Quo magis quaBrimus magis dubitamus." 

The grand result of human wisdom, is thus only a consciousness 
that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, (" Quan- 
tum est quod nescimus ! ") — an articulate confession, in fact, by 



602 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

our natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation, — that 
" noiv we see through a glass, darkly." 

1. — Democritus, (as reported by Aristotle, Cicero, Sextus Empiricus, 
&c.) : — " We know nothing in its cause [or on a conjectural reading — in 
truth] ; for truth lies hid from us in depth and distance." 

2. — Socrates, (as we learn from Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, &c.,) was 
declared by the Delphic oracle the wisest of the Greeks ; and why ? 
Because he taught, — that all human knowledge is but a qualified ignorance. 

3. — Aristotle, (Metaphysica, L. ii., c. 1.) — " A theory of Truth, is partly 
easy, partly difficult. This is shewn by the fact, — that no one has been 
wholly successful, and no one wholly unsuccessful, in its acquisition ; but, 
while each has had some report to make concerning nature, though the con- 
tributions, severally considered, are of little or no avail, the whole together 
make up a considerable amount. And if so it be, we may apply the proverb 
— ' Who can miss the gate ? ' In this respect, a theory of Truth is easy. — 
But our inability to compass some Whole and Part, [or, to c. both W. and 
P.] may evince the difficulty of the inquiry ; (To <f o'hou rt (or r ) e#e/» xal 
/ai^og /ay 1vvct(sQix,i, 'hrihol to •^cchi'Kov otj/rij?.) — As difficulty, however, arises in 
two ways ; [in this case] its cause may lie, not in things, [as the objects 
known,] but in us, [as the subjects knowing.] For as the eye of the bat 
holds to the light of day, so the intellect [vovg, which is, as it were, (Eth. 
Nic. i. 7) the eye] of our soul, holds to what in nature are of all most 
manifest." * 

4. — Pliny, (Historia Naturalis, L. ii., c. 32.)—" Omnia incerta ratione, et 
in naturae majestate abdita." 

* In now translating this passage for a more general purpose, I am 
strongly impressed with the opinion, that Aristotle had in view the specia 
doctrine of the Conditioned. For it is not easy to see what he could mean 
by saying, that " we are unable to have [compass, realise the notions of] 
Whole and Part," or of " some Whole and Part ; " except to say, that wo 
are unable to conceive (of space, or time, or degree,) a whole, however large, 
which is not conceivable as the part of a still greater whole, or a part, how- 
ever small, which we may not always conceive as a whole, divisible into 
parts. But this would be implicitly the enounccmcnt of a full doctrine of 
the Conditioned. Be this however as it may, Aristotle's commentators have 
been wholly unable to reach, even by a probable conjecture, his meaning in 
the text. Alexander gives six or seven possible interpretations, but all 
nothing to the point ; whilst the other expositors whom I have had patience 
to look into, (as Averroes, Javelins, Fonseca, Suarez, Sonerus,) either avoid 
the sentence altogether, or shew that they, and the authorities whom they 
quote, had no glimpse of a satisfactory interpretation. I have been unable 
to find (on a hurried search) in the able and truly learned " Essay on the 
Metaphysics of Aristotle" by M. Ravaisson, a consideration of the pass 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 603 

5.— Tertullian, (Adversus Hasreticos, N. iv.) — " Cedat curiositas fidei, 
cedat gloria saluti. Certe, ant non obstrepant, ant quiescant adversus 
regularn — Nihil scire omnia scire est." — (De Anima, c. 1.) — " Quis revelabit 
quod Deus texit ? Unde scitandum ? Quare ignorare tutissimum est. 
Praestat enim per Deum nescire quia non revelaverit, quam per hominem 
scire quia ipse pragsumpserit." 

6. — Arnobius. (Contra Gentes, L. ii.) — " Qua3 nequeunt sciri, nescire 
nos confiteamur ; neque ea vestigare curemus, qua? non posse comprehendi 
liquidissimum est." 

7. — St Augustin. (Sermo xxvii. Benedictine Edition, vol. v.) — " Quaeris 
tu rationeni, ego expavesco altitudineni. (' O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae 
et scientiae Dei ! ') Tu ratiocinare, ego mirer ; tu disputa, ego credam ; 

altitudinem video, ad profundum non pervenio. Ille dicit, 

' Inscrutabilia sunt judicia ejus:' et tu scrutari venisti? Ille dicit, — ' In- 
investigabiles sunt viae ejus :' et tu investigare venisti ? Si inscrutabilia 
scrutari venisti, et ininvestigabilia investigare venisti ; crede, jam peristi." — 
(Sermo xciii.) — " Quid inter nos agebatur ? Tu dicebas, Intelligam, ut 
credam ; ego dicebam, Ut intelligas, crede. Nata est controversia, veniamus 
adjudicem, judicet Propheta, immo vero Deus judicet per Prophetam. 
Ambo taceamus. Quid ambo dixerimus, auditum est. Intelligam, inquis, 
ut credam ; Crede, inquam, ut intelligas. Respondeat Propheta : ' Nisi 
credideritis, non intelligetis.' " [Isaiah vii. 9, according to the Seventy.] — 
(Sermo cxvii.) — " De Deo loquimur, quid mirum, si non comprehendis ? Si 
enim comprehendis, non est Deus. Sit pia confessio ignoraniiae magis quam 
temeraria professio scientiae. Adtingere aliquantum mente Deum, magna 
beatitudo est ; comprehendere autem, omnino impossibile.' 1 '' * — (Sermo clxv.) 
— " Ideo multi de isto profundo quaerentes reddere rationem, in fabulas 
vanitatis abierunt." [Compare Sermo cxxvi. c. i.] — (Sermo cccii.) — " Con- 
fessio ignorantiae, gradus est scientiae." — (Epistola cxc. vol. ii.) — " Qua3 
nullo sensu carnis explorari possunt, et a nostra experientia longe remota 
sunt, atque in abditissimis naturas finibus latent, non erubescendum est 
homini confiteri se nescire quod nescit, ne dum se scire mentitur, nunquam 
scire mereatur." — (Epistola cxcvii.) — " Magis eligo cautam ignorantiam 
confiteri, quam falsam scientiam.profiteri." 

8.— St Chrysostom. ( -)~" Nothing is 

wiser than ignorance in those matters, where they who proclaim that they 
know nothing, proclaim their paramount wisdom ; whilst those who busy 
themselves therein, are the most senseless of mankind." 

9. — Theodoret, (Therapeutica, &c, Curative of Greek Affections, Ser- 
mon 1.)— " The beginning of science is the science of nescience ;" or — " The 
principle of knowlege is the knowlege of ignorance." 



* 



A century before Augustin, St Cyprian had said : — " We can onlyjustly 
conceive God in recognising Him to be inconceivable." I cannot, however. 
at the moment, refer to the passage except from memory. 



604 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

10. — St Peter Chrysologue. (Sermo li.)— " Nolle omnia scire, summa 
scientiae est." 

11. — " The Arabian Sage," (I translate this and the two following from 
Drusius and Gale) :— " A man is wise while in pursuit of wisdom ; a fool, 
when he thinks it to be mastered." 

12. — A Rabbi : — " The wiser a man, the more ignorant does he feel ; as 
the Preacher has it, [i. 18] — ' To add science is to add sorrow.' " 

13. — A Rabbi : — " Who knows nothing, and thinks that he knows 
something, his ignorance is twofold." * 

14. — Petrarch. (De Contemptu Mundi, Dial, ii.) — " Excute pectus tuum 
acriter ; invenies cuncta quae nosti, si ad ignorata referantur, earn propor- 
tionem obtinere, quam, collatus oceano, rivulus aestivis siccandus ardoribus : 
quamquam vel multa nosse, quid revelat ? " 

15. — Cardinal De Cusa. (Opera ed. 1565 ; De Docta Ignorantia, L. i. 
c. 3, p. 3). — " Quidditas ergo rerum, quae est entium Veritas, in sua puritate 
inattingibilis est ; et per omnes Philosophos investigata, sed per neminem, 
uti est, reperta ; et quanto in hac ignorantia profundius docti fuerimus, tanto 
magis ad ipsam accedemus veritatem." — {lb. c. 17, p. 13). — " Sublata igitur 
ab omnibus entibus participatione, remanet ipsa simplicissima entitas, quae 
est essentia omnium entium, et non conspicimus ipsam talem entitatem, nisi 
in doctissima ignorantia, quoniam cum omnia participantia entitatem ab ani- 
mo removeo, nihil remanere videtur. Et propterea magnus Dionysius 
[Areopagita] dicit, intellectum Dei, magis accedere ad nihil, quam ad aliquid. 
Sacra autem ignorantia me instruit, hoc quod intellectui nihil videtur, esse 
maximum incomprehensibile." — (Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae, p. 67.) — 
" Augustinus ait : — l Deum potius ignorantia quam scientia attingi.' Igno- 
rantia enim abjicit, intelligentia colligit ; docta vero ignorantia omnes modos 
quibus accedi ad veritatem potest, unit. Ita eleganter dixit Algazel in sua 
Metaphysica, de Deo : ' Quod quisque scit per probationem necessariam, 
impossibilitatem suam apprehendendi eum. Ipse sui est cognitor, et appre- 
hensor ; quoniam apprehendit, scire ipsum a nullo posse comprehendi. 
Quisquis autem non potest apprehendere, et nescit necessario esse impos- 
sibile eum apprehendere, per probationem praedictam, est ignorans Deum : 
et tales sunt omnes homines, exceptis dignis, et prophetis et sapientibus, 
qui sunt profundi in sapientia.' Haec ille."— See also : De Beryllo, c. 36, 

* Literally: 

" Te, tenebris j actum, ligat ignorantia duplex ; 
Scis nihil, et nescis te modo scire nihil." 
Or, with reference to our German evolvers of the Nothing into the Every- 
thing ; and avoiding the positio debilis : 

" Te, sophia insanum, tent insipientia triplex ; 
Nil sapis, et nil non te sapuisse doces ! " 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 605 

p. 281; De Yenatione Sapientiae, c. 12, p. 306; De Deo Abscondito* 
p. 338 ; &c. &c * 

16. — .ZEneas Sylvius (Piccolomini, Pope Pius II. Rhet. L. ii.)— " Cai 
plura nosse datum est, eum majora dubia sequuntur." 

17. — Palingenius (Zodiacus Vitas, Virgo v. 181, sq.) 

" Tunc mea Dux tandem pulcro sic incipit ore : — 
Simia coelicolum f risusque jocusque Deorum est 
Tunc homo, quum temere ingenio confidit, et audet 
Abdita naturas scrutari, arcanaque Divum, 
Cum re vera ejus crassa imbecillaque sit mens. 
Si posita ante pedes nescit, quo jure videbit 
Quae Deus et natura sinu occuluere profundo ? 
Omnia se tamen arbitratur noscere ad unguem 

* So far, Cusa's doctrine coincides with what I consider to be the true 
precept of a " Learned Ignorance." But he goes farther : and we find his 
profession of negative ignorance converted into an assumption of positive 
knowlege ; his Nothing, presto, becoming everything ; and contradictions, 
instead of standing an insuperable barrier to all intellectual cognition, em- 
ployed in laying its foundation. In fact, I make no doubt that his specula- 
tions have originated the whole modern philosophy of the Absolute. For 
Giordano Bruno, as I can shew, was well acquainted with Cusa's writings ; 
from these he borrowed his own celebrated theory, repeating even the language 
in which its doctrines were originally expressed. To Cusa, we can, indeed, 
articulately trace, word and thing, the recent philosophy of the Absolute. 
The term Absolute (Absolntum), in its precise and peculiar signification, he 
everywhere employs. The Intellectual Intuition (Intuitio Intellectualis) he 
describes and names ; nay, we find in him, even the process of Hegel's Dia- 
lectic. His works are, indeed, instead of the neglect to which they have 
been doomed, well deserving of attentive study in many relations. In 
Astronomy, before Copernicus, he had promulgated the true theory of the 
heavenly revolutions, with the corollary of a plurality of worlds ; and in the 
science of Politics, he was the first perhaps to enounce the principles on 
which a representative constitution should be based. The Germans have, 
however, done no justice to their countryman. For Cusa's speculations have 
been most perfunctorily noticed by German historians of philosophy ; and it 
is through Bruno that he seems to have exerted an influence on the Abso- 
lutist theories of the Empire. 

f The comparison of man as an ape to God, is from Plato, who, while he 
repeatedly exhibits human beings as the jest of the immortals, somewhere 
says, — " The wisest man, if compared with God, will appear an ape." 
Pope, who was well read in the modern Latin poets, especially of Italy, and 
even published from them a selection, in two volumes, abounds in manifest 
imitations of their thoughts, wholly unknown to his commentators. In his 
line, — 

" And shew'd a Newton as we shew an ape," 
— he had probably this passage of Palingenius in his eye, and not Plato. 
Warburton and his other scholiasts are aware of no suggestion. 



606 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

Garrulus, iufelix, caecus, tenierarius, aniens ; 
Usque adeo sibi palpatur, seseque licetur." 

18. — " Multa tegit sacro involucro natura, neque ullis 
Fas est scire quidem mortalibus omnia ; mnlta 
Admirare modo, nee non venerare : neque ilia 
Inquires qua? sunt arcanis proxima ; namque 
In manibus qua? sunt, haac nos vix scire putandum. 
Est procul a nobis adeo praesentia veri ! " * 

(" Full many a secret in her sacred veil 

Hath Nature folded. She vouchsafes to knowledge 

Not every mystery, reserving much, 

For human veneration, not research. 

Let us not, therefore, seek what God conceals ; 

For even the things which lie within our hands — 

These, knowing, we know not. — So far from us, 

In doubtful dimness, gleams the star of truth ! ") 

19. — Julius Cjesar Scaliger. (De Subtilitate, Ex. eclxxiv). " Sapien- 
tia est vera, nolle nimis sapere." (lb. Ex. cccvii., sect. 29 ; and compare 
Ex. cccxliv. sect. 4). " Hnmanse sapientiae pars est, quasdani aequo animo 
nescire velle."f (lb. Ex. lii.) " Ubique clamare soleo, nos nihil scire." 

20. — Joseph Justus Scaliger. (Poemata : Iambi Gnomici. xxi.) 
" Ne curiosus queer e causas omnium. 
Quaecunque libris vis Prophetarum indidit 
Afflata coelo, plena veraci Deo, 
Nee operta sacri supparo silentii 
IiTumpere aude, sed pudenter praeteri. 
Nescire velle, quce magister maximus 
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia es£." % 

* I know not the author of these verses. I find them first quoted by Fer- 
nelius, in his book " De Abditis Rerum Causis," (L. ii. c. 18.), which 
appeared before the year 1551. They may be his own. They are after- 
wards given by Sennertus, in his Hypomnemata, but without an attribution of 
authorship. By him, indeed, they are undoubtedly taken from Fernelius. 
Finally, they are adduced by the learned Morhof in his Polyhistor, who 
very unlearnedly, however, assigns them to Lucretius. They are not by 
Palingenius, nor Palearius, nor Hospitalius, all of whose versification they 
resemble ; for the last, indeed, they are almost too early. 

f I meant (above, p. 37) to quote this passage of Scaliger, but find that my 
recollection confused this and the preceding passage, with, perhaps, the simi- 
lar testimony of Chrysologus, (No. 10.) Chrysologus, indeed, anticipates 
Scaliger in the most felicitous part of the expression. 

X It is manifest that Joseph, in these verses, had in his eye the saying of 
his father. But I have no doubt, that they were written on occasion of the 
controversy raised by Gomarua against Arminhis. 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 607 

21. — Grotius. (Poemata ; Epigrammata, L. i.) 
Erudita Tgnorantia. 
" Qui curiosus postulat Totum suas 
Patere raenti, ferre qui non sufficit 
Mediocritatis conscientiam suas, 
Judex iniquus, ^estimator est malus 
Suique naturaeque. Nam rernm parens, 
Libanda tantum quae venit mortalibus, 
Nos scire pauca, multa mirari jubet. 
Hie primus error auctor est pejoribus. 
Nam qui fateri nil potest incognitum, 
Falso necesse est placet ignorantiam ; 
Umbrasque inanes captet inter nubila, 
Irnaginosae adulter Ixion Deae. 
Magis quiescet animus, errabit minus, 
Contentus eruditione parabili, 
Nee quaeret illam, siqua quasrentem fugit. 
Nescire qucedam, magna pars Sapientice est."* 

22. — Pascal. (Pensees, Partie I. Art. vi. sect. 26.) — " Si l'homme com- 
mencoit par s'etudier lui-meme, il verroit combien il est incapable de passer 
outre. Comment pourroit-il se faire qu'une partie connut le tout ?"f - - 
- - " Qui ne croiroit, a nous voir composer toutes choses d'esprit et de 
corps, que ce melange-la nous seroit bien comprehensible? C'est nean- 
moins la chose que Ton comprend le moins. L'homme est a lui-meme le 
plus prodigieux objet de la nature ; car il ne peut concevoir ce que c'est que 
corps, et encore moins ce que c'est qu'esprit, et moins qu'aucune chose com- 
ment un corps peut etre uni avec un esprit. C'est la le comble de ses diffi- 
cultes, et cependant c'est son propre etre : Modus, quo corporibus adhaeret 
spiritus, comprehendi ab liominibus non potest ; et hoc tamen homo est.'''' % 

* In this excellent epigram, Grotius undoubtedly contemplated the corre- 
sponding verses of his illustrious friend, the Dictator of the Republic of 
Letters ; but, at the same time, he, an Arminian, certainly had in view the 
polemic of the Remonstrants and anti-Remonstrants, touching the Divine 
Decrees. Nor, apparently, was he ignorant of testimonies, Nos. 17, 18. 

f This testimony of Pascal corresponds to what Aristotle says : — " There 
is no proportion of the Infinite to the Finite." (De Ccelo, L. i. cc. 7, 8.) 

X Pascal apparently quotes these words from memory, and, I have no 
doubt, quotes them from Montaigne, who thus (L. ii. ch. 12.) adduces them 
as from St Augustin : u Modus, quo corporibus adhaarent spiritus, omnino 
mirus est, nee comprehendi ab homine potest ; et hoc ipse homo est." — 
Montaigne's commentator, Pierre Coste, says that these words are from 
Augustin, De Spiritu et Anima. That curious farrago, which is certainly 
not Augustin's, does not however contain either the sentence or the senti- 
ment ; and Coste himself, who elsewhere gives articulate references to the 
quotations of his author, here alleges only the treatise in general. 



608 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

II. Testimonies to the more special fact, that all our knowlege, 
whether of Mind or of Matter, is only phoznomenal. 

Our whole knowlege of mind atid of matter is relative, — con- 
ditioned, — relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in 
themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, 
or know them only as incognisable ; and we become aware of 
their incomprehensible existence, only as this is indirectly and 
accidentally revealed to us, through certain qualities related to 
our faculties of knowlege, and which qualities, again, we cannot 
think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of themselves. 
All that we know is therefore phsenomenal, — phaenonienal of the 
unknown.* The philosopher speculating the worlds of matter 
and of mind, is thus, in a certain sort, only an ignorant admirer. 
In his contemplation of the universe, the philosopher, indeed, 
resembles iEneas contemplating the adumbrations on his shield ; 
as it may equally be said of the sage and of the hero, — 

"Miratur; Rerumque ignarus, Imagine gaudet." 
JSTor is this denied ; for it has been commonly confessed, that, as 
substances, we know not what is Matter and are ignorant of what 
is Mind. With the exception, in fact, of a few late Absolutist 
theorisers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of all others 
most harmoniously re-echoed by every philosopher of every 
school; and, as has so frequently been done, to attribute any 
merit, or any singularity to its recognition by any individual 
thinker, more especially in modern times, betrays only the igno- 
rance of the encomiasts. 

1. — Protagoras, (as reported by Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, 
Laertius, &c.) — " Man is [for himself] the measure of all things." (Sec 
Bacon, No. 14.) 

2. — Aristotle. (Metaphysica, L. vii., c. 10.)—" Matter is incognisable 
absolutely or in itself." — (De Anima, L. iii., c. 5.) — " The intellect knows 

* Hypostasis in Greek, (of ovoioc I do not now speak, nor of hypostasis in 
its ecclesiastical signification,) and the corresponding term in Latin, Substan- 
tia, (per se subsistens, or substans, i. e. accidentibus, whichever it may mean,) 
expresses a relation — a relation to its phenomena. A basis for phenomena, 
is, in fact, only supposed, by a necessity of our thought ; even as a relative 
it is not positive! i/ known. On this real and verbal relativity, see St Augus- 
tin, (De Trinitate, 1. vii., cc. 4, 5, 6.)— Of the ambiguous term Subject 
(v7?ox.ii t utvoS) I have avoided speaking. 



RELATIVITY OF OUR KNOWLEGE. 609 

itself, only in knowing its objects." — The same doctrine is maintained 
at length in the Metaphysics, b. xii., cc. 7 and 9, and elsewhere. 

3. — St Augustin. (De Trinitate, L. ix., cc. 1, 2.) The result is — " Ab 
utroque notitia paritur ; a cognoscente et cognito." — (lb. L. x., cc. 3-12.) 
Here he shows that we know Mind only from the phenomena of which we 
are conscious ; and that all the theories, in regard to the substance of what 
thinks, are groundless conjectures.— (Confessionum, L. xii. c. 5.) — Of our 
attempts to cognise the basis of material qualities he says ; " Dum sibi haec 
dicit humana cogitatio, conetur earn, vel nosse ignorando, vel ignorare 
noscendo." 

4. — Boethius. (De Consolatione Philosophic, L. v., pr. 4.) — " Omne 
quod cognoscitur, non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscentium 
potius comprehenditur facultatem." — (Pr. 6.) — " Omne quod scitur, non ex 
sua, sed ex comprehendentium, natura cognoscitur." 

5. — Averroes. (In Aristotelem De Anima, L. iii. Text. 8). — " Intellectus 
intelligit seipsum modo accidentali." 

6. — Albertus Magnus. (Contra Averroem de Unitate Intellectus, c. 7). 
" Intellectus non intelligit seipsum, nisi per accidens fiat intelligibile ; ut 
materia cognoscitur per aliquid, cujus ipsa est fund am en turn. Et si aliqui 
dicant intellectum intelligi per hoc, quia per essentiam est praesens sibi ipsi, 
hoc tamen secundum philosophiam non potest dici." (See also Aquinas 
(Summa Theologise, P. i. Qu. 89, Art. 2 ; De Yeritate, Qu. 10, Art. 8) and 
Ferrariensis (Contra Gentes, L. iii. c. 46). 

7. — Gerson. (De Concordia Metaphysics). — " Ens quodlibet dici potest 
habere duplex Esse ; sumendo Esse valde transcendentaliter. Uno modo, 
sumitur Ens, pro natura rei in seipsa ; alio modo, prout habet esse, objectale 
seu repraesentativum, in ordine ad intellectum creatum vel increatum. — Haec 
autem distinctio non conficta est vel nova ; sed a doctoribus, tarn metaphy- 
sicis quam logicis subtilibus, introducta. Ens consideratum seu relictum 
prout quid absolutum, seu res quaedam in seipsa, plurimum differt ab esse, 

quod habet objectaliter apud intellectum. Ens reale non 

potest constituere scientiam aliquam, si non consideretur in suo esse objectali, 
relato ad ipsum ens reale, sicut ad primarium et principale objectum." 

8. — Leo Hebr^eus. (De Amore, Dial, i.) — " Cognita res a cognoscente, 
pro viribus ipsius cognoscentis, hand pro rei cognita? dignitate recipi solet." 

9. — Melanchthon. (Erotemata Dialectices, L. i. Pr. Substantia). — 
" Mens humana, per accidentia, agnoscit substantiam. Non enim cernimus 
oculis substantias, tectas accidentibus, sed mente eas agnoscimus. Cum 
videmus aquam manere eandem, sive sit frigida, sive sit calida, ratiocina- 
mur : — aliud quiddam esse formas illas discedentes, et aliud quod eas 
sustinet." 

2q 



G10 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

10. — Julius Caesar Scaliger. (De Subtilitate, Ex. cccvii. § 12). — " Nego 
tibi ullam esse formam nobis notam plene, et plane : nostramque scientiam 
esse umbrain in sole [contendo]. Formaram enim cognitio est rudis, con- 
fusa, nee nisi per kz^hjtuous. Neque verum est, — formae substantial spe- 
cieni recipi in intellectum. Non enim in sensu unquam fuit." — {lb. Ex. cccvii. 
§ 21). — " Substantias non sua specie eognosci a nobis, sed per earum acci- 
dentia. Quis enim me doceat, quid sit substantia, nisi illis miseris verbis, — 

res subsistens ? Quid ipsa ilia substantia sit, plane ignoras ; 

sed, sicut Vulpes elusa a Ciconia, lambimus vitreum vas, pultem haucl 
attingimus." 

11. — Francis Piccolomini. (De Mente Humana. L. i. c. 8.) — " Mens 
intelligit se, non per se primo, sed cum csetera intellexerit ; ut dicitur in 
L. iii. de Anima, t. 8, et in L. xii. Metaphysics, t. 38." 

12. — Giordano Bruno. (De Imaginum, Signorum et Idearum Composi- 
tione ; Dedicatio.) — " Quemadmodum, non nosmetipsos in prof undo et 
individuo quodara consistentes, sed nostri qusedam externa de superficie 
(colorem, scilicet, atque figuram,) accidentia, ut oculi ipsius siinilitudinem in 
speculo, videre posumus : ita etiam, neque intellectus noster se ipsam in se ipso, 
et res ipsas omnes in seipsis, sed in exteriore quadam specie, simulacro, ima- 
gine, figura, signo. Hoc quod ab Aristotele relatum, ab antiquis prius fuit 
expressum ; at a neotericorum paucis capitur. Intelligere nostrum, (id est, 
operationes nostri intellectus,) aut est phantasia, aut non sine phantasia. 
Rursuin. Non intelligimus, nisi phantasmata speculamur. Hoc est, quod 
non in simplicitate quadam, statu et imitate, sed in compositione, col- 
latione, terminorum pluralitate, mediante discursu atque reflexione, com- 
prehendimus." * 

13. — Campanella. (Metaphysica. L. i. c. 1. dub. 3, p. 12.) — u Ergo, 
non videntur res prout sunt, neque videntur extare nisi respectus." 

14. — Bacon. (Instauratio Magna ; Distr. Op.) — " Infonnatio sensus sem- 
per est ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia uuiversi ; atque magno pror- 
sus errore asseritur, sensum esse mensuram rerum." (See Protagoras, n. 1.) 

15. — Spinoza. (Ethices, Pars II. Prop, xix.) — "Mens humana ipsum 
humanum corpus non cognoscit, nee ipsum existere scit, nisi per ideas aftec- 
tionum quibus corpus afficitur." — (Prop, xxiii.) — " Mens se ipsam non cog- 
noscit, nisi quatenus corporis affectionum ideas percipit." Et alibi. — (See 
Bruno, n. 12.) 

16. — Sir Isaac Newton. (Principia, Schol. Ult,)— " Quid sit rei alicujus 
substantia, minime cognoscimus. Videmus tantum corporum figuras ot 

* Had Bruno adhered to this doctrine, he would have missed martyrdom 
as an atheist ; but figuring to posterity, neither as a great fool (if we believe 
Adelung), nor as a great philosopher (if we believe Schelling). Compare 
the parallel testimony of Spinoza (15), a fellow Pantheist, but on different 
grounds. 



RELATIVITY OF OUR KNOWLEGE— OCCULT CAUSES. 611 

colores, audimus tantuin sonos, tangimus tantum superficies externas, olfa- 
cimus odores solos, et gustamus sapores : intimas substantias nullo sensu, 
nulla actione reflexa, cognoscimus." 

17. — Kant. (Critik der reinen Vernunft, Vorr.) — " In perception every 
thing is known in conformity to the constitution of our faculty." And a 
hundred testimonies to the same truth might be adduced from the philoso- 
pher of Koenigsberg, of whose doctrine it is, in fact, the foundation. 

III. The recognition of Occult Causes. 

This is the admission, that there are phenomena which, though 
unable to refer to any known cause or class, it would imply an 
irrational ignorance to deny. This general proposition no one, 
I presume, will be found to gainsay ; for, in fact, the causes of all 
phenomena are, at last, occult. There has, however, obtained a not 
unnatural presumption against such causes ; and this presumption, 
though often salutary, has sometimes operated most disadvanta- 
geously to science, from a blind and indiscriminate application ; in 
two ways. In the first place, it has induced men lightly to admit 
asserted phenomena, false in themselves, if only confidently 
assigned to acknowledged causes. In the second place, it has 
induced them obstinately to disbelieve phenomena, in themselves 
certain and even manifest, if these could not at once be referred 
to already recognised causes, and did not easily fall in with the 
systems prevalent at the time. — An example of the former, is 
seen in the facile credence popularly accorded, in this country, to 
the asserted facts of Craniology ; though even the fact of that 
hypothesis, first and fundamental, — the fact, most probable in 
itself, and which can most easily be proved or disproved by the 
widest and most accurate induction, is diametrically opposite to 
the truth of nature ; I mean the asserted correspondence between 
the development and hypothetical function of the cerebellum, as 
manifested in all animals, under the various differences of age, of 
sex, of season, of integrity and mutilation. This, (among other 
of the pertinaciously asserted facts,) I know, by a tenfold super- 
fluous evidence, to be even ludicrously false. — An example of the 
latter, is seen in the difficult credence accorded in this country to 
the phenomena of Animal Magnetism ; phenomena in themselves 
the most unambiguous, which, for nearly half a century, have 
been recognized generally and by the highest scientific authorities 
in Germany ; while, for nearly a quarter of a century, they have 



612 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

been verified and formally confirmed by the Academy of Medicine 
in France. — In either case, criticism was required, and awanting. 
So true is the saying of Cullen : — " There are more false facts 
current in the world than false theories." So true is the saying 
of Hamlet : — " There are more things in heaven and earth, Hora- 
tio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But averse from 
experiment, and gregariously credulous. — 

" L'homme est de glace aux verites ; 
II est de feu pour les mensonges." 

1. — Julius Caesar Scaliger.* In his commentary on Theophrastus 
touching the Causes of Plants, he repeatedly asserts, as the Aristotelic doc- 
trine, the admission of Occult Causes. Thus, (L. ii. c. 5)— "Hoc dixit 
(Theophrastus), nequis ab eo nunc exigat occultas illarum, quas subticet, 
causas. Quasi dicat,— Sapienti multa licet ignorare." In like manner, (L. 
iv. c. 13.) — " Hunc quoque locum simul cum aliis adducere potes adversus 
eos qui negant Peripateticis ab occulta proprietate quicquam fieri. Apud 
hunc philosophum ssepe monuimus inveniri. Est autem asylum humame 
imbecillitatis, ac simile perfugium illi Periclis, — eig roc Uovtx." This we may 
translate, — " Secret service money." — The same he had also previously 
declared in his book De Subtilitate ; where, for example, (Ex. ccxviii, § 8), 
he says: — u Ad manifestas omnia deducere qualitates summa impudentia 
est ; " for there are many of these, " quse omnino latent animos temperatos, 
illudunt curiosis ; " and he derides those, " qui irrident salutare asylum illud, 
occultse proprietatis." 

2. — Alstedius. (Physica, (1630,) Pars. I. c. xiii., reg. 4.) — " Quod 
Augustinus ait, 'Multa cognoscendo ignorari, et ignoraudo, cognosci,' hie 
imprimis habet locum, ubi agitur de Occultis Qualitatibus, quarum investi- 
gatio dicitur Magia iSTaturalis, id est, praestantissima naturae indagatio in 
qua verbum modestige, Nescio, subinde usurpandum est. Verbum modestia? 
dico, non autem stultitise." 

3. — Voltaire. (Dictionnaire Philosophique, voce Occultes.) — " Qualites 
Occultes. — On s'est moque fort longtemps des qualites occultes ; on doit se 
moquer de ceux qui n'y croient pas. Repetons cent fois, que tout principe, 

* I have quoted the elder Scaliger, under all the three heads of this article, 
for a truth in his language is always acutely and strikingly enounced. The 
writings of no philosopher, indeed, since those of Aristotle, are better worthy 
of intelligent study ; and few services to philosophy would be greater than a 
systematic collection and selection of the enduring and general views of this 
illustrious thinker. For, to apply to him his own expressions, these 
u zopyra," these " semina a3ternitatis," lie smothered and unfruitful in a 
mass of matters of merely personal and transitory interest. I had hoped to 
have attempted this in the appendix to a work " De vita, genere et genio 
Scaligcrorum ; " but this I hope no longer. 



OCCULT CAUSES. 613 

tout premier ressort de quelque oeuvre que ce puisse etre du gi*and Demi- 
ourgos, est occulte et cache pour jamais aux mortels." And so forth. — 
(Physique Particuliere, ch. xxxiii.) — " II y a done certainement des lois 
eternelles, inconnues, suivant lesquelles tout s'opere, sans qu'on puisse les 

expliquer par la matiere et par le mouvement. II y a dans 

toutes les Academies une chaire vacante pour les verites inconnues, comme 
Athenes avait un autel pour les dieux ignores." * 

* Besides the few testimonies adduced, I would refer, in general, for some 
excellent observations on the point, to Fernelius " De Abditis Rerum 
Causis," and to the " Hypomnemata " ofSennertus. 



APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

OF SYLLOGISM, ITS KINDS, CANONS, NOTATIONS, ETC. 

Touching the principle of an explicitly Quantified Predicate, 
I had by 1833 become convinced of the necessity to extend and 
correct the logical doctrine upon this point. In the article 
on Logic, reprinted above, and first published in April 1833, 
the theory of Induction there maintained proceeds on a thorough- 
going quantification of the predicate, in affirmative propositions. 
(P. 159, sq.) 

Before 1840, I had, however, become convinced, that it was 
necessary to extend the principle equally to negatives ; for I find 
by academical documents, that in that year, at latest, I had pub- 
licly taught the unexclusive doctrine. 

The following is an extract from the " Prospectus of Essay 
towards a New Analytic of Logical Forms," appended to the edi- 
tion of Reid's Works, published by me in 1846 : — 

" In the first place, in the Essay there will be shown, that the Syllogism 
proceeds, not as has hitherto, virtually at least, been taught, in one, but in 
the two correlative and counter wholes, (Metaphysical) of Comprehension, 
and (Logical) of Extension ; — the major premise in the one whole, being the 
minor premise in the other, &c. — Thus is relieved, a radical defect and vital 
inconsistency in the present logical system. 

In the second place, the self-evident truth,— That we can only rationally 
deal with what we already understand, determines the simple logical postu- 
late, — To state explicitly what is thought implicitly. From the consistent 
application of this postulate, on which Logic ever insists, but which Logi- 
cians have never fairly obeyed, it follows : — that, logically, we ought to take 
into account the quantity, always understood in thought, but usually, and for 
manifest reasons, elided in its expression, not only of the subject, but also of 
the predicate, of a judgment. This being done, and the necessity of doing it, 
Avill be proved against Aristotle and his repeaters, we obtain, inter alia, the 
ensuing results : — 

1°, That the preindesigwxte terms of a proposition, whether subject or pre- 
dicate, are never, on that account, thought as indefinite (or indeterminate) in 
quantity. The only indefinite, is particular, as opposed to definite, quantity ; 
and this last, as it is cither of an extensive maximum undivided, or of an 
extensive minimum indivisible, constitutes quantity uni re/sal (general,) and 
quantity singular (individual.) In fact, definite and indefinite are the only 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 615 

quantities of which we ought to hear in Logic ; for it is only as indefinite 
that particular, it is only as definite that individual and general, quantities 
have any (and the same) logical avail. 

2°, The revocation of the two Terms of a Proposition to their true relation ; 
a proposition being always an equation of its subject and its predicate. 

3°, The consequent reduction of the Conversion of Propositions from three 
species to one — that of Simple Conversion. 

4°, The reduction of all the General Laws of Categorical Syllogisms to a 
Single Canon. 

5°, The evolution from that one canon of all the Species and varieties of 
Syllogism. 

6°, The abrogation of all the Special Laws of Syllogism. 

7°, A demonstration of the exclusive possibility of Three syllogistic Figures ; 
and (on new grounds) the scientific and final abolition of the Fourth. 

8°, A manifestation that Figure is an unessential variation in syllogistic 
form ; and the consequent absurdity of Reducing the syllogisms of the other 
figures to the first. 

9°, An enouncement of one Organic Principle for each Figure. 

10°, A determination of the true number of the legitimate Moods; with 

11°, Their amplification in number ; 

12°, Their numerical equality under all the figures ; and, r 

13°, Their relative equivalence, or virtual identity, throughout every sche- 
matic difference. 

14°, That, in the second and third figures, the extremes, holding both the 
same relation to the middle term, there is not, as in the first, an opposition 
and subordination between a term major and a term minor, mutually containing 
and contained, in the counter wholes of Extension and Comprehension. 

15°, Consequently, in the second and third figures, there is no determinate 
major and minor premise, and there are two indifferent conclusions ; whereas, 
in the first the premises are determinate, and there is a single proximate con- 
clusion. 

16°, That the third, as the figure in which Comprehension is predominant, 
is more appropriate to Induction. 

17°, That the second, as the figure in which Extension is predominant, is 
more appropriate to Deduction. 

18°, That the first, as the figure in which Comprehension and Extension 
are in equilibrium, is common to Induction and Deduction, indifferently." 

What follows was subjoined, as a Note, to the " Essay on the 
New Analytic of Logical Forms," by Mr Thomas Spencer Baynes, 
which obtained the prize proposed in 1846, but was only pub- 
lished in 1850. The foot-notes are now added. 

" The ensuing note contains a summary of my more matured doctrine of 
the Syllogism, in so far as it is relative to the preceding Essay. 

All mediate inference is one — that incorrectly called Categorical; for the 
Conjunctive and Disjunctive forms of Hypothetical reasoning are reducible to 
immediate inferences. 

Mentally one, the Categorical Syllogism, according to its order of enounce- 
ment, is either Analytic (A) or Synthetic (B). Analytic, if (what is inap- 



616 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

propriately styled) the conclusion be expressed first, and (what are inappro- 
priately styled) the premises be then stated as its reasons. Synthetic, if the 
premises precede, and, as it were, effectuate the conclusion.* These general 
forms of the syllogism can with ease be distinguished by a competent nota- 
tion ; and every special variety in the one has its corresponding variety in 
the other. 

Taking the syllogism under the latter form (B), (which, though perhaps 
less natural, ] has been alone cultivated by logicians, and to which, there- 
fore, exclusively all logical nomenclature is relative,) — the syllogism is again 
divided into the Unfigured (a) and the Figured (b). 

The Unfigured Syllogism (a) is that in which the terms compared do not 
stand to each other in the reciprocal relation of subject and predicate, being 

* [This, in theirs* place, relieves the syllogism of two one sided views. 
The Aristotelic syllogism is exclusively synthetic ; the Epicurean (or Neo- 
clesian) syllogism was— for it has been long forgotten— exclusively analytic ; 
whilst the Hindoo syllogism is merely a clumsy agglutination of these coun- 
ter forms, being nothing but an operose repetition of the same reasoning, 
enounced, 1°, analytically, 2°, synthetically. In thought, the syllogism is 
organically one ; and it is only stated in an analytic or synthetic form, from 
the necessity of adopting the one order or the other, in accommodation to 
the vehicle of its expression — Language. For the conditions of language 
require, that a reasoning be distinguished iuto parts, and these detailed 
before and after other. The analytic and synthetic orders of enouncement 
are, thus, only accidents of the syllogistic process. This is, indeed, shewn in 
practice ; for our best reasonings proceed indifferently in either order. 

In the second place, this central view vindicates the Syllogism from the 
objection of Petitio Principii, which professing logically to annul logic, or at 
least to reduce it to an idle tautology, defines syllogistic — the art of avowing 
in the conclusion what has been already confessed in the premises. This 
objection (which has at least an antiquity of three centuries and a half) is 
only applicable to the synthetic or Aristotelic order of enouncement, which 
the objectors, indeed, contemplate as alone possible. It does not hold 
against the analytic syllogism ; it does not hold against the syllogism consi- 
dered aloof from the accident of its expression ; and being proved irrelevant 
to these, it is easily shewn in reference to the synthetic syllogism itself, that 
it applies only to an accident of its external form.] 

f [I say less natural. For if it be asked — " Is C in A ?" surely it is more 
natural to reply, — Yes, (or C is in A), for C is in B and B in A, (or, for B 
is in A and C in B) ; than to reply, — B is in A, and C in B, (or C is in B 
and B in A), therefore, C is in A. 

In point of fact, the analytic syllogism is not only the more natural, it is 
even presupposed by the synthetic. To express in words, we must first ana- 
lyse in thought the organic whole— the mental simultaneity of a simple rea- 
soning; and then, we may reverse in thought the process, by a synthetic 
return. Further, we may now enounce the reasoning in either order; but, 
certainly, to express it in the essential, primary, or analytic order, is not on I \ 
more natural, but more direct and simple, than to express it in the acciden- 
tal, secondary, or synthetic. This also avoids tho objection of V. P.] 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 617 

in the same proposition, either both subjects or both predicates.* Here the 
dependency of Breadth and Depth, (Extension and Intension, Extension 
and Comprehension, &c.) does not subsist, and the order, accordingly, of 
the premises is wholly arbitrary. This form has been overlooked by the 
logicians, though equally worthy of development as any other ; in fact, it 
affords a key to the whole mystery of Syllogism. And what is curious, the 
Canon by which this syllogism is regulated, (what may be called that of 
logical Analogy or Proportion,) has, for above five centuries, been commonly 
stated as the one principle of reasoning, whilst the form of reasoning itself, 
to which it properly applies, has never been generalized. This Canon, which 
has been often erroneously, and never adequately enounced, in rules four, 
three, two, or one, is as follows : — In as far as two notions, (notions proper 
or individuals,) either both agree, or one agreeing, the other does not, with a 
common third notion ; in so far, these notions do or do not agree with each 
other. — The propositions of this syllogism in no -figure are marked iu the 
scheme of pure logical notation by horizontal lines of uniform breadth. 

In the Figured Syllogism (b), the terms compared are severally subject 
and predicate, consequently, in reference to each other, containing and con- 
tained in the counter wholes of Intension and Extension. Its Canon is : — 
What worse relation of subject and predicate subsists between either of two 
terms and a common third term, with which one, at least, is positively related ; 
that relation subsists between the two terms themselves. — In the scheme of pure 
logical notation a horizontal tapering line marks this relation ; the subject 
standing at the broad, the predicate at the pointed end. 

There are three, and only three, Figures — the same as those of Aristotle ; 
and in each of these we may distinguish the orders of Breadth and of Depth. 

The First Figure emerges, when the middle term is subject of the one 
extreme and predicate of the other ; that is, when Ave pass from the one 
extreme to the other, through the middle, in the order whether of Extension 
or of Intension. In the notation of this Figure, we may of course arbitrarily 
make either of these orders to proceed from left to right, or from right to 
left ; that is, two arrangements are competent. — There is here, determin- 
ately, one direct and one indirect conclusion. 

The Second Figure arises, wdien the middle term is the predicate of both 
extremes ; the order of Breadth proceeding from middle to extremes, the 
order of Depth from extremes to middle. 

The Third Figure is determined, when the middle term is the subject of 
both extremes ; the order of Extension proceeding from extremes to middle, 
the order of Intension from middle to extremes. 

In the Second and Third Figures there is thus only one arrangement pos- 
sible in logical notation. And as Extension and Intension are here in equi- 
librium, there is no definite major and minor premise, and consequently no 
indirect, but two indifferent conclusions. This is best marked by two cross- 
ing lines under the premises, each marking the extreme standing to the other 
as subject or as predicate. 

Of course each Figure has its own Canon, but these it is not here requisite 

* [As : Convertible (identical, fyc.) are : — All C and some B ; as also all B 
and all A ; therefore all C and some A. — This may be variously stated.] 



618 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

to state.* The First Figure, besides its more general canon, has also two 
more special, — one for Syllogisms in the order of Extension, and one for 
Syllogisms in the order of Intension. And what is remarkable, Aristotle's 
Dictum de Omni, &c, (in the Prior Analytics,) gives that for Extension, 
whilst his rule — Prcedicatum prcedicati, &c. (in the Categories), affords that 
for Intension, although this last order of Syllogism was not developed by 
him or the logicians ; — both, however, are inadequately stated. 

In regard to the notation of Quality and Quantity, and in the syllogisms 
both Unfigured and Figured. — Negation is marked by a perpendicular line, 
which may be applied to the copula, to the term, or to the quantification. — 
As to Quantity (for there are subordinate distinctions), it is sufficient here 
to state, that there is denoted by the sign [ , or ( ] (for the quantity of one 
term ought to face the other), some; — by the sign [ : ], all; — by the sign 
[ • ], a half; — by the sign [ ' or i ], more than a half The last two are 
only of use to mark the ultra-total distribution of the middle term of a syllo- 
gism, between both the premises, as affording a certain inference, valid, but 
of little utility. This I once thought had been first generalized by me, but 
I have since found it fully stated and fairly appreciated by Lambert, f to say 
nothing of Frommichen. 

Above (p. 76 [of Mr Baynes's Essay] ) is a detail of my pure logical 
notation, as applicable to the thirty-six moods of the first figure. The order 
there is not, however, that which I have adopted. The following is my 
final arrangement, and within brackets is its correspondence with the num- 
bers of that given above : — The moods are either A) Balanced, or B) Unba- 
lanced. In the former class both terms and propositions are balanced, and it 
contains two moods — i ; ii, [=i ; ii.] In the latter class there are two sub- 
divisions. For either, a) the terms are unbalanced, — iii, iv, [=xi, xii] ; or, 
b) both the terms and propositions are unbalanced, — v, vi ; vii, viii ; ix, x ; 
xi, xii, [=vii, viii; iii, iv; v, vi ; ix, x.] The following equation applies 
to my table of moods given in Mr Thomson's Laws of Thought : — i ; ii ; xi, 
xii ; vii, viii ; iii, iv ; v, vi ; ix, x. — The present arrangement is also more 
minutely determined by another principle, but this it is not here requisite to 
state. 

* [The several Canons for the several Figures may however now be given. 
They are : for the 

First Figure. — " What worse relation of determining, (predicate,) and of 
determined, (subject,) is held by either of two notions to a third, with which 
one at least is positively related ; — that relation do they immediately 
(directly) hold to each other, and indirectly (mediately,) its converse." 

Second Figure. — " What worse relation of determined, (subject,) is held by 
either of two notions to a third, with which one at least is positively related ; 
— that relation do they hold indifferently to each other." 

Third Figure. — " What worse relation of determining, (predicate,) is held 
by either of two notions to a third, with which one at least is positively 
related ;— that relation do they hold indifferently to each other."] 

f [On the use which has been made in this country of the logical spe- 
culations of Lambert and Ploucquet, it would be out of place here to say 
anything.] 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 



619 



If we apply the moods to any matter however abstract, say letters, there 
will emerge forty-two syllogisms ; for the formal identity of the balanced 
moods will then be distinguished by a material difference. On the contrary, 
if we regard the mere formal equivalence of the moods, these will be reduced 
to twenty-one reasonings, — seven affirmative, and fourteen negative. Of the 
balanced moods, i and ii are converted each into itself; of the unbalanced, 
every odd, and the even number immediately following, are convertible ; and 
in negatives, the first and second moods (a, b) of the corresponding syzygy 
or jugation, is reduced from or to the second and first moods (6, a) of its 
reciprocal. 

There are no exceptions. The Canon is thorough- going. Only it must be 
observed : 1°, that the doctrine is wrong which teaches, that a universal 
negation is not a worse relation than a particular ; 2°, that the connection of 
a negative with an affirmative mood, is regulated exclusively by the identity 
in quantity of their syzygy or antecedents. The Greeks, in looking to the 
conjugation of the premises alone, are more accurate than the Latins, who 
regard all the three propositions of a syllogism in the determination of a 
mood. 

It is not to be forgotten, that as the correlation of the logical terms ought 
to be known only from the expression, (ex facie propositionis aut syllogismi,) 
for all other knowledge of the reciprocal dependence of notions is contingent, 
material, and extralogical ; and as the employment of letters, following upon 
each other in alphabetical order, may naturally suggest a corresponding sub- 
ordination in the concepts which they denote : I have adopted the signs C 
and T, which are each the third letter in its respective alphabet, for the 
extremes ; and the sign M, for the middle term of the syllogism. The 
scheme is thus emancipated from all external associations, and otherwise left 
free in application. I also transpose the former symbols in the interconver- 
tible moods ; so that whereas in the one stand C M T, in the other stand 
IMC."* 

* [The following Table is, in part, an epitome of the preceding Note : — 





Immediate ; 




of which some < 


a 


kinds are 


S3 




o< 




03 




O c3 




S3 O 




2^3 i 




<£ £ 








r& 




£ 

•^ 


Mediate ; 


o 


Syllogism Proper, 


2* 

a 


. (Categorical.) 



Recognised, 

as Propositional. 

(Various.) 



Not recognised, 
as Syllogistic. 



Analytic, "i 



Synthetic. 



f Disjunctive. ~] 



Hypo- 
thetical. 



j y 

[_ Conjunctive. J 
Unfigured. 



fF. I. 
Figured, 

(Intensive ■{ F. II. 

or Exten- 
sive) in 1 1 • HI- 



620 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

The notation previously spoken of, represents every various 
syllogism in all the accidents of its external forim But as the 
number of Moods in Syllogisms Analytic and Synthetic, Intensive 
and Extensive, Unfigured and Figured, (and of this in all the 
figures,) are the same ; and as a reasoning, essentially identical, 
may be carried through the same numerical mood, in every genus 
and species of syllogism : — it seems, as we should wish it, that 
there must be possible also, a notation precisely manifesting the 
modal process, in all its essential differences, but, at the same 
time, in its internal identity, abstract from every accidental variety 
of external form. The anticipation and wish are realised ; and 
realised with the utmost clearness and simplicity, in a notation 
which fulfils, and alone fulfils these conditions. This notation 
I have long employed : and the two following are specimens. 
Herein, four common lines are all the requisites : three (horizon- 
tal) to denote the terms ; one (two ? — perpendicular) or the want 
of it, at the commencement of comparison, to express the quality 
of affirmation or negation ; whilst quantity is marked by the 
relative length of a terminal line within, and its indefinite excur- 
rence before, the limit of comparison. This notation can repre- 
sent equally total and ultra-total distribution, in simple syllogism 
and sorites ; it shews, at a glance, the competence or incompetence 
of any conclusion ; and every one can easily evolve it. 

C , . C j 

M V M , V 



Of these : the former, with its converse, includes, Darii, Dabi- 
tis, Datisi, Disamis, Dimatis, &c. ; whilst the latter, with its con- 
verse, includes Celarent, Cesare, Celantes, Camestres, Camenes, 
&c. But of these, those which are represented by the same dia- 
gram are, though in different figures, formally, the same mood. 
For in this scheme, each of the thirty-six moods lias its peculiar 
diagram ; whereas, in all the other geometrical schemes, hitherto 
proposed, (whether by lines, angles, triangles, squares, parallelo- 
grams, or circles,) the same (complex) diagram is necessarily 
employed, to represent an indefinite plurality of moods. These 
schemes thus tend, rather to complicate, than to explicate, — rather 
to darken, than to clear up. — The principle of this notation may 
he realised in various forms. 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 621* 



APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

(B.) ON AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION,— ON PROPOSITIONAL 
FORMS,— ON BREADTH AND DEPTH— ON SYLLOGIS- 
TIC, AND SYLLOGISTIC NOTATION, &c. 

The present article consists of observations made in reference 
to a memoir by Professor De Morgan, entitled, " On the Symbols 
of Logic, the Theory of the Syllogism," &c, read, in February 
1850, to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and published in 
their Transactions, (vol. ix.) The author, (with whom I had pre- 
viously been involved in a logical discussion, more, however, of 
personal than of scientific concernment,) politely transmitted to 
me a copy of this paper, during the following summer ; and the 
character of its contents induced me, forthwith, to address the 
following letter to the Editor of the Athenaeum. This letter, I 
was compelled to limit to a single point, in consequence of the 
others leading me into a field of argument too extensive : but, as 
I now find that my observations upon these were more fully writ- 
ten out than I had recollected, — as the unexclusive controversy 
involves some questions of scientific novelty, — and tends withal to 
shew of what value are the mathematical improvements of Logic, 
now proposed; on second thoughts, I here append the whole 
discussion, with a few verbal amplifications, and two supplemen- 
tary notes. I regret, indeed, that the necessity of vindicating 
what, to me, is the cause of truth, should have given to these 
comments a character so controversial ; constraining me to com- 
bat, from first to last, the logical speculations of one who ranks 
deservedly among the highest of our British Mathematicians. In 
fact, if I be not radically wrong, with the exception of two doc- 
trines, — which are themselves, indeed, only borrowed, — there is 
not, in the whole compass of Mr De Morgan's " Logical Systems," 
a single logical novelty which is not a logical blunder. Of other 
errors, I say nothing. This, Mr De Morgan himself has not only 
warranted, but called on, me to shew. For, though casting no 
blame on the aggressive purport of his paper, it will, at least, be 
allowed, that the attack is from too respectable a quarter not, on 
my part, to justify, — even, perhaps, to necessitate, a defence : 
and blame, assuredly, I cast neither on Professor De Morgan nor 

* 2 Q 



622* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

on the Philosophical* Society of Cambridge ; for the love of truth 
is always, of itself, polemical, (" ii67is/u,og oIttmvtuv, kc*\ rns 'Ax^ei^, 
Trarvif) ; whilst reason and experience concur in shewing, that 
Mathematics and Logic, like Love and Majesty, — 

" Hand bene conveniunt, nee in una sede morantur." 
But it comes to this : — If, as has been said, Mr De Morgan's 
Memoir may represent the Transactions, the Transactions the 
Society, and the Society the University of Cambridge, then, either 
is the knowlege of Logic, — even of " Logic not its own," — in that 
seminary now absolutely null, or I am publicly found ignorant of 
the very alphabet of the science I profess. The alternative I am 
unable to disown ; the decision I care not to avoid ; and the dis- 
cussion, I hope, may have its uses. 

Edinburgh, 7 th August 1850. 
Sir, — May I request the favour of being permitted, through 
your journal, to say a few words on a somewhat abstract subject, 
and in answer to Professor De Morgan's paper " On the Symbols 
of Logic," &c, in the volume of the " Transactions of the Philoso- 
phical Society of Cambridge," which has just appeared. [Wrong ; 
the volume was not then published.] With that gentleman's 
logical theories, in general, I should not have thought of inter- 
fering ; and even his errors concerning my own doctrines I would 
have willingly left to refute themselves. Not that I entertain a 
low opinion of Mr De Morgan's talent. In so far as I am quali- 
fied to judge, he well deserves the high reputation as a mathema- 
tician which he enjoys. But as a writer on the theory of reason- 
ing, I cannot think that he has done his talent justice. I am 
persuaded, indeed, that had he studied mathematics as he has 
studied logic, and were the members of the " Cambridge Philo- 
sophical Society " as competent judges in the one science as in 
the other, — his character as a mathematician would rank very 
differently from what it does, nor would their " Transactions " 
have introduced his logical speculations to the world. It is because 

* The Philosophical Society of Cambridge ought not, however, to be so 
entitled, if we take the word Philosophy in the meaning attached to it every- 
where out of Britain. — (See above, p. 272.) I may add, as another example, 
that the recent edition, by the learned Erdmann, of the " Opera Philoso- 
phica " of Leibnitz, precisely omits, as non-philosophical, the matters which 
in Cambridge are styled philosophy ; — to wit, Physics and Mathematics. 
Philosophy is not, however, formally excluded from the " Philosophical 
Society of Cambridge," as it is from the u Philosophical Society of London.'" 
Mr De Morgan's paper is an example. 






AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 623* 

Mr De Morgan has not merely erred himself, but put into my 
mouth his own rudimentary mistakes ; and because, so far from 
these mistakes being detected when his paper was read and dis- 
cussed, that paper has been deemed by the Philosophical Society 
a contribution worthy of publication as a part of its proceedings : 
— these special causes now principally constrain me to a brief 
exposition of the unintentional misrepresentations. 

The present comments relate exclusively to Mr De Morgan's 
strictures on my abstract notation of syllogistic forms, a specimen 
of which has been published by Mr Thomson in his " Laws of 
Thought." But though that fragment contain only affirmations, 
and of these only the naked symbols, Mr De Morgan excogitating 
the negative forms, translates them into concrete language, accord- 
ing to his conception of what they ought to express ; and then, 
without a ivord of explanation, makes me their author. — Farther : 
Finding that these expressions, as those which he attributes to 
logicians in general, are repugnant to " common thought," to 
" common language," — he might have fairly added, and to com- 
mon sense, he has swelled a memoir of more than fifty quarto 
pages with objections to Aristotle's doctrine and to mine ; but 
radically misapprehending both, the illustration of his errors, at 
once dispels the objections themselves, and therewith the two 
novel " Systems " reared on the same imaginary foundation. 

Mr De Morgan says : — 

" The following phrase of Sir William Hamilton's system, ' All A is not 
some B, 1 [ ! ] is very forced, both in order and phraseology ; one who sees 
it for the first time finds it hard to make English or sense of it. The mean- 
ing is, ' Each A is not any one among certain of the .B's,' [ ! ] and in its 
place in the system alluded to, the uncouth expression helps to produce sys- 
tem, and the perception of uniform laws of inference." — (P. 5.) And again : 
" The logician, who must have forms, has to make a choice, and he has 
invented cumular expressions which do not suit the genius of common 
thought or common language. ' All man is not fish] [ ! ] is the form in 
which a logician denies that any man is a fish. Sir William Hamilton says, 
4 All man is not all fish. ,' [ ! ] Common language would deny the first by 
saying, ' No, nor any part of him.'' Even ' All men are not fishes,' only 
means, in common language, ' some men are not fishes,'' with emphasis upon 
the great number that are implied to be so ; and would therefore be held 
false. The predicate of a negative must be exemplar: it is, ' Every man is 
not any one fish: [ ! ] The examination of the following table will show 
that there is much less forcing of common expression in a list of nothing but 
exemplars than in a list of nothing but cumulars" [ ! ] — (P. 24.) 

This attribution of certain phrases for certain forms of predica- 
tion to the logicians and to me, is a mere imagination by Mr De 



624* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

Morgan. I admit, that had we thus spoken, we had spoken, not 
only ungrammatically, but nonsensically. This, however, we 
have not done ; and Mr De Morgan's imagination of the fact, is 
the result of a strange oversight on his part of the commonest 
principle and practice of common logic and of common language. 
For language is logical in its forms ; and a logic which cannot be 
unambiguously expressed in language, is no logic at all. Logic, 
Language and Common Sense are never at variance. Mr De 
Morgan, I say, curiously misunderstands the nature — the contrast 
of Affirmation and Negation, and the counter expressions in which 
that contrast is embodied by language. I regret to tarry for a 
moment on a point so elementary ; but, as the mistake is of that 
very point, it is necessary to state, what I feel it irksome not to 
suppose known — at least instinctively. Known, however, scientifi- 
cally it often is not ; and as the principle has never been developed, 
I may, at once, correct Mr De Morgan, and explain it. 

Mr De Morgan's error is twofold ; and of these again each is 
compound. 

1°. He thinks, that in universal negation, the logicians employ 
the predesignation " all," — which they do not ; and do not employ 
the predesignation " any" — which they regularly do. On this 
complex reversal of the fact, he fancies an obnoxious " System," — 
wars strenuously against this hostile phantom, — fathers it on 
others, — and finally adjudges it to righteous condemnation, by 
the style of " Cumular." 

2°. He thinks, that the predesignation " all " can be super- 
seded, and the predesignation " any " applied to universal affirma- 
tion; — both erroneously. From the conjunction of these two 
impossibilities, the new-born " System " is engendered, which he 
fosters as his own, and fondly baptizes by the name of " Exem- 
plar." — But these errors must be further explained. 

To speak, then, of Affirmation and Negation. 

In result. — Affirmation is inclusion, and universal affirmation, 
absolute inclusion — the inclusion of a definite this or all (indivi- 
dual or class) ; Negation is exclusion, and universal negation, abso- 
lute exclusion — the exclusion of a definite this or all (individual or 
class). (Laying individuals aside) : 

In process. — Affirmation proceeds downwards or inwards, from 
greatest to least, from the constituted whole to the constituent 
parts; Negation, upwards or outwards, from least to greatest, 
from the constituent parts to the constituted whole. 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 625? 

The counter qualities are also contrasted, in and as the two 
counter quantities. — In proportion : — to Depth or intension, is 
affirmation ; to Breadth or extension, is negation. — At the maxi- 
mum of Breadth, there is predicated : — by Affirmation, the least 
of the most, (that is, there is given the fewest attributes to the 
greatest number of things) ; — by Negation, the most of the least, 
(that is, there is withdrawn the greatest number of attributes from 
the fewest things). Hence : — To posit the Genus, is not to posit 
the Species and Individual ; but to sublate the Genus, is to sub- 
late the Species and Individual. — At the maximum of Depth, 
there is predicated : — by Affirmation, the most of the least, (that 
is, there is given the greatest number of attributes to the fewest 
things) ; — by Negation, the least of the most, (that is, there is 
withdrawn the fewest attributes from the greatest number of 
things). Hence : — To posit the Individual, is to posit the Species 
and Genus ; but to sublate the Individual, is not to sublate the 
Species and Genus. — [See Table, p. 644*.] 

Now, from the higher view of an abstract or scientific Notation, 
which regards and states only the result ; Negation appears as a 
positive and irrespective act — an act of exclusion. Here, all the 
signs of affirmative and negative quantity are the same ; what is 
absolutely included or excluded is all. 

On the contrary, from the lower view of concrete or common 
Language, which is conversant about the process, Negation (what 
its name expresses) shows only as a privative and correlative 
act, — as the undoing, as the reversal of inclusion or affirmation. 
Here the predesignatory words for universally affirmative and 
universally negative quantity are not the same. In ordinary 
speech we say : — for absolute affirmation, all is, &c. ; for absolute 
negation, not any (or none) is, &c. ; thus accomplishing the exclu- 
sion of all through the non-inclusion of any. To use, in common 
language, the same verbal predesignation of quantity for an affir- 
mative, as for a negative, universal, would be, in fact, to do nearly 
the opposite of what is intended to be done. Every logician knows 
explicitly, as every unlearned man knows implicitly, that natu- 
rally, and in common language, the negation of a universal affir- 
mative predesignation yields only a particular negative, as the 
negation of a universal negative predesignation yields only a par- 
ticular affirmative. The logician, therefore, to designate a Univer- 
sal Affirmative, familiarly uses i( allis," "all are;" the "all" (*■&;, 



626* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B). 

'Kotvng, onmis, omnes, &c.) containing under it, and therefore 
meaning, — sometimes collectively, " whole" &c. (faog, oAw, &#*$, 
X7rxurig, ovpirocg, ffv/xnoiurss, totus, toti, cunctus, cuncti, universus, uni- 
versi, &c.) — sometimes distributively, " every," " each," " each 

Several," &C. (wag- rtg, exuarog, sxctarog rig, wag sxeiar og, •nu.v'Tig sxttaroh 

cotioovv, <7r&$ oorig, nuvTig oaot, quisque, unusquisque, singulusquis- 
que, &c.) : and for a Universal Negative, (eschewing " all is not," 
as at best ambiguous,) he employs " no or none (not one) is," 
" not any is," " any is not" &c. (ovhlg, ^hlg hn, nullus, ullus non, 
non or ne aliquis, non quisquam, non quispiam est, &c.) To quote 
my version of the " Asserit A" &c, a version with which Mr De 
Morgan may be acquainted : — 

" A, it affirms of this, these, all, 
Whilst E denies of any," &c. 
In this, common logic and common language (from which last 
many curious illustrations might be given) are at one. As a single 
example : — the Latin ullus (a word in which that tongue is, in this 
instance, richer than the Greek, which has nothing, at least, better, 
than the ambiguous -rig-,) affords a beautiful illustration. Ullus 
(unulus,) any ; ullus non, nullus (non or ne ullus, ovhlg, pMs,) not 
any, none ; nonnullus (non nullus,) not none, some ; nullus non, 
none not, all. So, nemo, (ne homo) ; non nemo ; and nemo non. 
So, nihil, (ne hilum) ; non nihil ; and nihil non. Nor need there 
be an end of instances in any language. The Hebrew is, in fact, 
so far as I am aware, the only tongue which does not always dis- 
criminate unambiguously, and by verbal contrast, the affirmative 
from the negative universal, though one tongue may certainly do 
this more deftly than another. 

Now, the predesignation of universal negation, which Mr De 
Morgan marvellously makes " the logician " to employ, nay even 
to have " invented " for himself, as a technical expression, — this 
predesignation, (in his example — " All man is not fish," in mine — 
" All men are not blackamores,") is in logical, as in ordinary, 
language, not a universal at all, but a particular negative — a mere 
denial of omnitude — tantamount, therefore, it should be, to a par- 
ticular affirmative. Ov vug hn is, indeed, the common expression 
of Aristotle and the Greek logicians for " some is not." [" Some 
is " should, however, have been held its direct and natural result ; 
for, as we shall see, two particulars in the affirmative and nega- 
tive forms, ought to infer each other. Compare p. 635*, sq.] — If 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 627* 

Mr De Morgan, therefore, can name (as I know may be done) any 
writer on logic who employs the expressions thus attributed to all 
logicians, Mr De Morgan is heartily welcome to treat the blun- 
derer as he may deem his ignorance to deserve. — So much for 
" the logician." 

As for myself: — The language I use is that of the logicians; 
only the quantity of the predicate, contained in thought, is overtly 
expressed, whereas, in common language, followed by common 
logic, that quantity is, though never null, usually, merely under- 
stood. Therefore, reversing the expression of " the logician," 
Mr De Morgan naturally reverses mine ; but the distorted non- 
sense which he lays to my account is, I am assured, only what he 
conceived a fair version of my abstract notation. As all, however, 
that has been said of Mr De Morgan in relation to the logicians 
in general, equally applies to him in regard to me in particular, 
addition is superfluous. 

So much for Mr De Morgan's mistakes about " the Cumular 
System," laid to the logicians and myself. I proceed to the 
counter scheme, his own " Exemplar System," proposed in sup- 
plement and correction of the other, and founded, as said, on the 
employment of the predesignation " any " as a universal, not only 
in negative, but also in affirmative, propositions. 

Our English "any" (aenig, anig, Ang.-Sax.) is of a similar 
origin and signification with the Latin " ullus" (unulus), and means, 
primarily and literally, (even) one, (even) the least or fewest. — 
But now, to speak with the schools, it is of quodlibetic application, 
ranging from least to greatest ; and (to say nothing of extra-logical 
modes of speech, as interrogation, doubt, conditioning, extenua- 
tion, intension, &c.) is exclusively adapted to negation. For 
example. — We can say as we can think, affirmatively : — " All tri- 
angles are all trilateral ;" this collectively, — " The whole (or class) 
triangle is the whole (or class) trilateral; this distributively, — 
" Every (or each several) triangle is every (or each several) tri- 
lateral." Now, let us try " any " as an affirmative : — " Any tri- 
angle is any trilateral." This is simple nonsense ; for we should 
thus confound every triangle with every other, pronouncing them 
all to be identical. Nor, in fact, does Mr De Morgan attempt this. 
He wisely omits the form. But what an omission ! Still, how- 
ever, the " Table of Exemplars" which he does present, (p. 25,) 
stands alone, I am persuaded, in the history of science. And mark, 
in what terms it is ushered in : — as " a system of predication free 



628* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

from the objections urged against the cumular forms, as far as 
contradiction is concerned," nor, like them, " unsuited to the genius 
of common thought or common language." Nay. so lucid does it 
seem to its inventor, that, after the notation is detailed, we are 
told, that it " needs no explanation" 

Now, then, let us take, as our first specimen of this " System," 
the fifth proposition of the Table, — " Some one X is any one Y ;" 
and applying this form, by interpretation, to a concrete matter, we 
have, — " Some one figure is any one triangle," — " Some one 
animal is any one man." Here, however, the proposition is in 
terms absurd ; nor does it even express what it is intended to 
mean. For not any — for not any one — for no one figure is any 
or any one triangle. 

Again, as our second specimen, taking the first proposition of 
the Table, — " Any one X is any one Y." This, we are told, 
" gives " or is supposed to mean, — " There is but one X and one 
Y, and X is Y." But it means — it can mean — nothing of the 
kind ; it is only doubly unmeaning, or doubly contrary to all mean- 
ing. For, in the first place, " any " and " any one " necessarily 
imply that there are more — more than one; and, in the second, 
the whole proposition becomes, on such hypothesis, absurd. This 
" Exemplar " proposition is, however, a favourite with Mr De 
Morgan, who thinks it to afford " a conclusion not admissible in the 
Cumular form" (p. 26). So long as the proposition remains void 
of sense, this is true ; not certainly if interpreted into meaning. 

Final] y, however, the inconsistency of the " Exemplar Sys- 
tem" is sufficiently shown in this, — That its propositions, even 
when not immediately suicidal, do not admit of any rational con- 
version. Thus, the sound without sense, — the proposition first 
adduced, is the verbal converse of another which, by chance, is 
not self-contradictory ; to wit, — " Any one Y is some one X," — 
" Any one triangle is some one figure," — " Any one man is some 
one animal." The reason is obvious. " Any " contains in it 
" some," " some " contains under it " any ;" " some" is the less 
definite, the genus, " any " is the more definite, the species ; " any" 
is always " some," some is not always " any." — The absurdity is, 
however, carried to a climax, through Mr De Morgan's formal 
limitation of the several quantities by " one." 

But enough ! — Mr De Morgan gravely propounds all this as 
" sense and English," — as in honourable contrast to the uncouth- 
ness and violence and contradictions of the "Cumular System." 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 629* 

He certainly does not mean to turn logic into ridicule ; but, assur- 
edly, if logic were responsible for the " forms " and " systems " 
thus seriously proposed, it would no longer be respectable enough 
even for a jest. — " This notation," says Mr De Morgan, " needs 
no explanation." Right ! — 

" Eniendare jocos, sola litura potest." 
The more special objections of Mr De Morgan— one and all — 
it would be equally easy to refute ; but whilst the part, now con- 
sidered, of his paper is a fair specimen of the whole, I am unwilling 
to trespass farther on your indulgence, by discussions of so limited 
an interest. — I remain, &c. 

W. Hamilton.* 

I have now signalised Mr De Morgan's general and gigantic 
error, that on which is founded the correction he proposes of all 
former Logic ; and proceed to consider his special criticism of my 
peculiar scheme of syllogistic and propositional forms. 

And here I may subdivide Mr De Morgan's objections into two 
classes ; — the first containing those to the general principle of my 
scheme, — the second, those to this or that of its individual doc- 
trines. 

I. — Under the former head there are two objections. Of 
these : — 

* To this Mr De Morgan made the following answer ; and on the one point 
to which it is limited, assuredly, he is as completely right, as I am completely 
wrong. 

" There is but one of what I call Sir W. Hamilton's misapprehensions 
which I shall notice now, — and that only to prevent your readers from making 
fruitless inquiries. He states that a volume of the ' Cambridge Philosophical 
Transactions ' has recently appeared. This I am pretty certain is not the 
case. The copy of my memoir which I had the honour to forward to him 
was one of the extra copies which the courtesy of the Society allows to its 
contributors as soon as their several papers are printed. The paging, by 
which Sir W. Hamilton cites, shows that he used that copy, or one of the 
same issue : — this paging, of course, will be altered when the paper takes its 
place in the volume. 

" The rest of Sir W. Hamilton's letter I shall dispose of, so far as I deem 
it necessary, if I live to publish another edition of my work on Logic. — I 
am, &c. 

" A. De Morgan. 

"University College, August 26, 1850." 



630* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

1. — The first is supposed, — is assumed, without even an 
attempt at proof ; it requires, indeed, merely to be stated, to be 
refuted. — " Section iv." of Mr De Morgan's Paper is entitled : — 
" On the Symbolic forms of the system in which all the combina- 
tions of quantity are introduced by Arbitrary Invention of forms 
of predication ; " and it commences : — " This system belongs to 
Sir William Hamilton, &c." — Now, in applying the term " arbi- 
trary invention " to this scheme, Mr De Morgan has either gone 
too far, or not far enough. For if " the forms of predication " 
exist in thought, then is their expression in logic not an " arbi- 
trary invention ; " whereas, if they do not exist in thought, then 
is their expression in logic, not arbitrary, but false. To have 
proved the latter would, indeed, have pricked the " punctum 
saliens " of my system. But not attempting this, Mr De Mor- 
gan now virtually admits his own thesis to be absurd ; even had 
he not, in fact, previously recorded his formal acknowledgement, 
that the predicate has its quantity in thought. Why then did he 
insinuate, what, he knew, could not be maintained ? 

2. — The second of the two objections under this head is to the 
want, or insufficiency, in my doctrine, of a general Canon of Infe- 
rence ; for the exceptions, it is argued, are not regulated by, and 
do not manifest, the rule. (P. 13.) — Of all objections, none can 
be more curiously infelicitous than this. In the doctrine referred 
to, there is a rule, and no exceptions. The rule there governs 
everything ; everything is governed by the rule. — But, opposed 
to my canon, which, not having studied, he does not understand, 
Mr De Morgan propounds the following : — " Erase the symbols 
of the middle term, the remaining symbols show the inference." 
(Pp. 7, 11, 18, 26, &c.) This canon Mr De Morgan ought not 
to have given as his own. It is that of Ploucquet : — " Deleatur 
in prozmissis medius ; id quod restat indicat conclusionem ; " and 
on this canon Ploucquet established his " Logical Calculus." — 
Calculus and Canon have, however, long been rejected by the 
German logicians, as mechanical and useless. Hegel even pro- 
nounces : — " This, as a discovery and improvement in Logic, is 
the bitterest libel that was ever vented against the science." But 
worse than useless and mechanical, it does not hold good ; for, 
though valid in the Aristotelic system, it breaks down in a fourth 
part of the thirty-six moods emerging under my doctrine of syl- 
logism. " TranseoA, ergo." But has not Mr De Morgan con- 



PR0P0S1TI0NAL FORMS. 631* 

founded the exceptions to Ploucquet's canon, with the no excep- 
tions to mine ? * 

II. — Under the second head there are six litigious points. 

I shall first consider the objections to the propositioned forms, 
which I have peculiarly adopted. But it is proper to premise a 
general enumeration of these ; and in the following table, the 
Roman numerals distinguish such as are recognised in the Aris- 
totelic or common doctrine, whereas the Arabic cyphers mark those 
(half of the whole) which I think ought likewise to be recognised.f 

Affirmatives. 

1.) Toto-total = Afa = All — is all — . 

ii.) Toto-partial = Afi = All — is some — . (A) 

3.) Parti-total = Ifa = Some — is all — . 

iv.) Parti-partial = Ifi = Some — is some — . (I) 

Negatives. 

v.) Toto-total = Ana = Any — is not any — . (E) 
6.) Toto-partial = Ani = Any — is not some — . 
vii.) Parti-total = Ina = Some — is not any — . (0) 
8.) Parti-partial = Ini = Some — is not some — . 

The preceding eight Propositional Forms, I may also add, are 
illustrated by the following six Diagrams, — (if Definitely Indefinite, 
for if Indefinitely Definite (see p. 635*, sq.) they require a series of 
more artificial and complex lines.) The identity of Subject and 
Predicate is marked and measured by the co-extension of the two 
lines below and above each other ; the non-identity, by the con- 
verse. The rationale of the letters is manifest ; and it is likewise 
manifest, that this principle of notation may be carried out into 
Syllogistic. — Proposition (1) is illustrated by Diagram (a) ; (ii) 

* Mr Thomson (Laws of Thought, &c.) seems to have fallen into a simi- 
lar inaccuracy ; not perhaps considering, that the disconformity in quantifi- 
cation of the extremes, as they appear in the antecedent, and in the conclu- 
sion, is, in my doctrine, not an exception to, but a consequent of, the canon. 

f In the literal symbols, I simplify and disintricate the scholastic notation ; 
taking A and I for universal and particular, but extending them to either 
quality, marking affirmation by F, negation by N, the two first consonants 
of the verbs affirmo and nego — verbs from which, I have no doubt, that 
Petrus Hispanus drew, respectively, the two first vowels, to denote his four 
complications of quantity and quality. These I have appended. 



632* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B). 

by (b) ; (3) by (c) ; (iv) by (d); (v) by (e) ; and (8) by (f) : but 
(6) is shown by (b and d); as (vii) by (c and d). Proposition 
(8), indeed, though it have its special diagram (f), quadrates with 
all the others. 

Aff. Aff. & Neg. Neg. 

b) B „Z — 



* 



a)"—— e)» 



A 



>n 



OA 






Of the four propositional forms specially recognised by me (1, 
3, 6, 8), Mr De Morgan questions only two ; one affirmative and 
one negative, being the first and the last, — the toto-total affirma- 
tion, the parti-partial negation.* In quoting Mr De Morgan's 
" objections to this system as promulgated by Sir William Hamil- 
ton" (p. 22), I shall substitute for his symbols his own translations 
of them into common language. 

1 Toto-total Affirmation. To this form Mr De Morgan makes 

two objections : the first, that it is complex ; the second, depen- 
dent upon the first, that it cannot be denied by a simple proposi- 
tion. Of these objections in their order. 

First Objection. — " First, the fundamental propositions of a logical system 
should be independent of each other, so that no one of them should be a 
compound of two others. Now ' all Xs are Fs,' or 'X and Y are identical 
names,' is really compounded of ' All Xs are some Fs,' and ' Some Xs are all 
Fs.' If we once grant a complex proposition, why this one only, when 
there are others, out of which, as I have shewn, a separate system of com- 
plex syllogism may be constructed? — To say that the mode of inventing pro- 
positions yields no other, is not an answer ; for it is the mode itself which is 
attacked in its results. Every syllogism in which ' All is all ' occurs, is 
either a strengthened form, or the resultant of two other syllogisms." 

The purport of Mr De Morgan's reasoning in this passage is, 
that the form " All Xs are all Ys" is merely the compound or 
resultant of two simple or original forms — " All Xs are some 

* Mr De Morgan and Mr Thomson, herein, partly agree, partly differ. 
They differ in regard to Toto-total affirmation (1), which the former denies, 
while the latter allows. They differ also about Toto-partial negation (6), 
which Mr Thomson refuses, but Mr De Morgan apparently admits. They 
both agree, however, in rejecting Parti-partial negation (8). See p. C40*. 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 633* 

Ys," and " Some Xs are all Ys." This is manifestly erroneous, 
looking no farther than to the text of Mr De Morgan himself. 

In the first place the proposition " All Xs are all Ys" is said to 
be compound, in contrast to two other propositions its consti- 
tuents. But how " All Xs are all Ys" is a proposition more com- 
plex than " All Xs are some Ys," than " Some Xs are all Ys," or 
even than (i Some Xs are some Ys," I confess myself wholly 
unable to imagine. Mr De Morgan does not pretend that the 
predicate has no quantity ; but how one quantity can be more 
complex than another, — how All should be compound, and Some 
simple, he has not attempted to explain. — Nay more. He form- 
ally admits, that a proposition with its predicate universally, and 
its subject particularly, quantified is simple ; as, in like manner, a 
proposition with a particular predicate and a universal subject: 
and yet, in the same breath, he coolly assumes, (for he propounds 
neither argument nor explanation,) that a proposition with its 
subject and predicate each universally quantified is complex ! 
But if " Some figure is all triangle" be a simple proposition, is it 
possible to conceive, that " All triangle is all trilateral" should not 
be a simple proposition likewise ? It seems, that some and all, all 
and some, some and some, are each elementary, whilst all and all 
is alone derivative ! 

But in the second place, this inconsistency is eclipsed by an- 
other ; for Mr De Morgan not only maintains that the proposi- 
tion " All Xs are all Ys" is compound, but, though itself confes- 
sedly valid, compounded of two incompossible propositions, — " All 
Xs are some Ys," and " Some Xs are all Ys ;" — in other words, 
that " All triangle is all trilateral" is the combined result of " All 
triangle is some trilateral," and " Some triangle is all trilateral." 
But, unless some be identified with all, if either of the latter pro- 
positions is true the other must be false ; — nay, in fact, if either 
be true, the very proposition which they are supposed to concur 
in generating is false likewise.* Mr De Morgan proceeds : — 

* See p. 635*, sq. — In confirmation of the above, I am liappy to adduce 
the following testimony by a very able logician: — " Psychologically as well 
as logically, we believe that Sir William Hamilton is right in maintaining 
' All A is all B' to be a single judgment, in opposition to Mr De Morgan, 
who exhibits it in the complex form, ' All A is B, and all B is A ;' thereby 
accepting the second horn of the above dilemma, since ' all A is some B and 
all B is some A,' would be a self-contradictory assertion." And in a note : — 
" A curious inconsistency may be remarked in the theory of the complex 



634* APPENDIX. II. LOGICAL (B). 

Second objection. — " Secondly, one object of formal logic being to provide 
form of enunciation for all truth, and form of denial for all falsehood, it is 
clear that every falsehood which can be enunciated as a truth should be 
deniable within the forms of the science. Now the simple denial of ' All Xs 
are all Ys' is the disjunctive assertion, ' Either no Xs are some Ys, or some 
Xs are no YsS Though it happen that I can prove one of these to be true, 
without knowing which, yet the power of denying in an elementary form the 
elementary proposition, ' All is all] is refused me. A philologist asserts the 
Greek words A and B to be identical in meaning : he says ' All A is all B." 1 
One passage of Homer, and one of Hesiod, both contain the doubtful word 
C, having two possible explanations, the first of which makes Homer assert 
that some As are not Bs, whilst the second makes Hesiod assert that some Bs 
are not As. The premises being admitted, the resulting denial of the simple 
proposition of Sir William Hamilton's system is only obtainable by a dilemma, 
or, as it were, metasyllogism.^ 

Before proceeding to consider Mr De Morgan's argument in 
this paragraph I must say a word upon his language. " By- 
denial/' " deniable," &c, he must mean contradictory denial, 
contradictorily deniable, &c. This opposition alone affords a 
single pair of propositions, and the one alternative of truth or 
falsehood ; and he apparently rejects contrary denial. The word 
contrary he however commonly employs for contradictory. But 
contrary opposition emerges, when a plurality of propositions can 
severally deny the original enouncement, but where each, though 
not all of these, may be false. This being noted, I go on. 

In the first place, Mr De Morgan's reasoning is inapplicable. 
An enlarged system is not, as he himself admits, (p. 20), to be cri- 
ticised by the laws, far less, then, by the accidents, of an unen- 
larged one. It may be quite true, that the four propositional 
forms of the Aristotelic scheme has each its contradictory oppo- 
site ; but it by no means follows, that the same accident should 
attend every legitimate amplification of that scheme. It is sum- 
proposition, Avhen placed in antagonism to that of the quantified predicate. 
I cannot assert ' all A is B and all B is A,' without having thought of A and 
B as co-extensive, i. e., without having made the judgment ' all A is all B.' 
If we know the quantity of the predicate, we are of course entitled to state 
it. The complex proposition is only preferable on the supposition of our 
ignorance, a supposition which annihilates the complex proposition itself. If 
the assertion, ' all A is some B and all B is some A' be suicidal, is there 
more vitality in ' all A is (I know not how much) B, and all B is (I know 
not how much) A ?' But the question, to be fully discussed, must be treated 
on psychological as well as logical grounds. Logic deals with the judgment 
as already formed ; psychology inquires what is the actual process of the 
mind in forming it." — (North British Review, Vol. xv. p. 116.) 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 635* 

cient, that every competent assertion should have its competent 
denial. 

But, in the second place, in point of fact, the Aristotelic contra- 
diction only proceeds on a certain arbitrary hypothesis of parti- 
cularity ; to wit, that " some" is to mean only " some at least" 
(possibly therefore, all or none,) thus constituting, both in affirm- 
ation and in negation, virtually a double proposition, — a proposi- 
tion comprising, in effect, two contraries.^ 

In the third place, however, the proposition is, in truth, contra- 
dictorily deniable ; for every legitimate affirmation must admit of 
a legitimate negation. But negation and affirmation must be con- 



* I have here, and once before (p. 633*) criticised Mr De Morgan, not on 
Aristotelic principles. It is but fair that I state articulately the grounds. 

All particularity, all " some" is, generically, indefinite ; but one particu- 
larity is of one indefinitude, another is of another. In short, to apply the 
technical formula of Specification (p. 640*) in its highest simplicity — in its 
most repulsive nakedness : — some Some is not some Some. For, so to speak, 
of " some," one species denotes indefinite definitude; whilst another de- 
notes definite indefinitude. And why? The former species not definitely 
excluding the definite, — the " all" and " none," is therefore, at once, in 
different respects, indefinite and definite, that is, indefinitely definite ; whilst 
the latter, definitely excluding the definite, — the " all," the " none," is, 
therefore, at once, in different respects, definite and indefinite, that is, defi- 
nitely indefinite. 

1° In the sense of indefinite definitude. — Affirmatively : " Some" 
means " some at least, — some perhaps all ; " that is, " some," itself always 
indefinite, but not definitely exclusive of the definite, " all."— Negatively : 
" Not some " means " not some, at least, — not some, perhaps none ; " that is, 
'* not some," itself always indefinite, but not definitely exclusive of the defi- 
nite " not any," or " none" — " At least" is the watchword of this system, 
in affirmatives as in negatives. 

2° In the sense of definite indefinitude. — Affirmatively: " Some" 
means " some at most, — some not all, —some only ; " that is, " some," itself 
always indefinite, but definitely exclusive of the definite " all." — Negatively: 
" Not some" means " not some, at most, — not some and yet not none, — 
not some, only ;" that is, "not some," itself always indefinite, but definitely 
exclusive of the definite, " not any," or " none." — " At most," both in 
afixrinative and negatives, is the watchword of this system. 

Of these several meanings of " some," all the world has been, at least 
implicitly, never unaware ; and of the two, the latter is certainly the more 
prominent. This enhances the marvel, that the former only has been expli- 
citly developed and formally generalised by Aristotle ; but what Aristotle 
failed to do, has been left undone by subsequent logicians. The two different 
meanings afford, however, in many cases two different results, as well in the 
relation of lncompossibility, as in the relation of (immediate) Inference: and 



636* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

tradictorily opposed ; as Aristotle has expressed it, — u Between 
affirmation and negation there is no mean." Yet it does not fol- 
low, that the denial should rest on a single alternative case, — on 
a contradictory proposition. For it may well be, that a. denial is 
supported only on one or other of two incompossible contraries ; 
but it will be valid if one or other of the contraries be true. In 
the present case, the proposition, for example, — " All (class, 
whole, every, &c.) triangle is all (class, whole, every, &c.) trila- 
teral," is contradictorily denied by the proposition, — " All (class, 
&c.) triangle — is not — all (class, &c.) trilateral," in the sense, — 

what is worse, even than the exclusive consideration of a single meaning, is, 
that Inference and Incompossibilitv (especially by the logicians after Aris- 
totle,) have, in that single meaning, been jumbled together under the ban-en 
and ambiguous head of Opposition. 

But worst of all ; in fact, the one meaning considered exclusively by Aris- 
totle and the logicians, has, only improperly, an intralogical, formal, objective 
significance. It is not a necessity, either of thought or of things, but merely 
an accident of the former. Its peculiar indefinitude is a contribution from 
the contingency of our ignorance, and with our ignorance would disappear ; 
for, (to say nothing of Individuals or Individualised Generals,} in reality and 
in thought, every quantity is necessarily either all, or none, or some. Of 
these the third presents the only formal indefinitude; and it is formally 
exclusive of the other two. The double inadvertence, as I think, of Aristotle, 
(An. Pr. I. 2.) in recognising the indesignate (dlioQiarov) to be at once a 
quantity and an indefinitude, (for the Indesignate is thought, either precisely, 
as whole or as part, or vaguely, as the one or the other, unknown which, but 
the worse always presumed) ; — this vagueness, — this material, subjective and 
contingent indefinitude, lay at the root of his whole doctrine of Particularity, 
the indefinitude of which quantity he should have kept purely formal, objec- 
tive, and necessary, instead of confounding the two indefinitudes together. 
Thus by mixing up the material with the formal, — what was indefinitely 
thought with what was thought as indefinite, Aristotle (to say nothing of other 
consequences) annulled all inference of, what I would call, Integration. On 
his doctrine we are not warranted, froin the proposition — " Some dogs are 
all barking animals," (" Quoddam caninum est onine latrans,") to infer the 
proposition — " Some dogs do not bark," (" Quoddam caninum est nullum 
latrans") — But I am lapsing into discussion. — We must therefore have two 
Tables : one for Incompossibility, another for Inference ; and under each, 
we must distinguish the result on either system of particularity. At present 
I can merely append the compound Table, (see following page) ; and shall 
only say, that a better, though a more elaborate, plan of showing the 
various correlations of the several pairs of propositions, is to write all the 
eight on the phases of octagonal diagrams, and then to connect them by 
different lines (thicker, thinner, waving, broken, dotted, &c.) representing, 
in the different systems, their mutual dependencies. 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 



637 



" This proposition, ' All triangle is all trilateral/ is untrue." And 
such, in the present form, is comparatively safe ; for there being 

TABLE OF THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE EIGHT PROPOSITIONAL FORMS, 
ON EITHER SYSTEM' OF PARTICULARITY. (FOR GENERA.LS ONLY.) 



<< <s <• << oowwootfi:d:d:s: t -iH-'H-ih-'ajp:o505< < < t3 a: d: p: m h-< i-< a; 

UU iUUiU UU *Uk Uii U-UUl 

cp r" r v" • • • 8- 


C te C 

M 3 


Common to I. and II., 

in either of which 

all Propositions are related. 

Of these their 


tb^tft^g, p p p ^^^^ ip^^ppp s>££g;gg 

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 


< 

1 

CD 


Doubtful, cr. 

Contrar. bi. 
Contrar. un. 
Contrar. un. 

Contrar. un. 

Repugn, bi. cr. 

Contrar. un. 
Repugn, bi. cr. 

Repugn, bi. di. 


1. 

Indefinite Defini- 

tude. 
(Some at least.) 


I. 

INCOM POSSIBILITY 

of Proposition with Proposition, on 
the System of 


Incons. un. 
Incons. un. 

Incons. un. cr. 

Incons. un. 
Incons. un. 

Doubtful, cr. 

Contrar. bi. 
Contrar. un. 
Contrar. un. 

Contrar. un. 

Contrar. bi. cr. 

Contrar. un. 
Contrar. bi. cr. 

Contrar. bi. di. 


2. 

Definite Indefini- 

tude. 
(Some at most.) 


1— iv. 

ii — iv. 
3— iv. 

v— 6. 

v — vii. 

v— 8. 

6-8. 
vii— 8. 

1—8. 
ii— 6. 
ii— 8. 

3— vii. 
3—8. 

iv— 6, 6— iv. 

iv — vii, vii — iv. 

iv— 8, 8— iv. 




II. 

Infkrence 

from Proposition to Proposition, on the 

two Systems. 


Restr. bi . 

Restr. un. 
Restr. un. 

Restr. un. 
Restr. un. 
Restr. bi. 

Restr. un. 
Restr. un. 


Indefinite Defini- 
tude. 

(Some at least.) 


Restr. bi. 

Restr. un. 
Restr. un. 

Restr. bi. 

Restr. un. 
Restr. un. 

Res. & Int. bi. 
Integr. un. 
Res. & Int. un. 

Integr. un. 
Res. & Int. un. 

Res. & Int. un 
Res. & Int. un. 
Integr. bi. 


2. 
Definite Indefini- 

tude. 
(Some at most.) 



Abbreviations : — bi. = bilateral; cr. = cross ; Contrar. = Contraries; di. = direct . 
Incons. = Inconsistents ; Int. or Integr. = Integration ; Repugn. = Repugnants, Contradic- 
tories; Res. or Restr. = Restriction, Subalternation ; un. = unilateral.— Blanks : in I. = Corn- 
possibles ; in II. = No inference.— (Unilateral, bilateral, cross, direct, refer to the Extremes.' 

The preceding Table may not be quite accurate in details. 

* 2 R 



638* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

here two universal predesignations, the negative particle, like the 
ass of Buridanus, is left in equilibrio, and not necessarily attracted, 
by preference, to either. (Illustrations might be drawn from indi- 
viduals and individualised classes.) The denial is here, certainly, 
vague and ambiguous ; but so it ought. For there are five several 
cases, any of which it may mean ; and of these any will validly 
support the negation of the affirmative proposition. These are : — 
1°, " Not-all triangle is all trilateral," equivalent to the proposi- 
tion, — " Some triangle is all trilateral ; " 2°, " All triangle is not- 
all trilateral/' equivalent to the proposition, — " All triangle is 
some trilateral ; " these oppositions, overlooked by the logicians, 
I call inconsistents. The following are contraries: — 3°, " All 
triangle is-not (i. e. excludes) all trilateral," tantamount (though 
ambiguously) to the proposition, — " Any triangle is not (no 
triangle is) any trilateral ;" 4°, " All triangle is not all trilateral," 
signifying, — " Some triangle is no trilateral;" 5°, " All triangle 
is-not all trilateral," in the sense of, — " No triangle is some tri- 
lateral." The first and fourth, the second and fifth, are in fact 
what I call integrants. 

Now Mr De Morgan misconceives all this. — In the first place, 
he does not perceive that a proposition can be contradictorily 
denied, though the denial itself may rest ultimately only on a 
single contrary or inconsistent proposition. For though the dene- 
gand be only contrarily or inconsistently opposed to each of the 
alternatively supporting propositions, it is however contradictorily 
opposed to them as a class. — In the second place, he has over- 
looked all the five cases on which the denial may be established, 
except the last two. — In the third place, he marvellously supposes 
that each of these does not singly invalidate the toto-total affirma- 
tive, but that the truth of this can be only denied by a disjunctive 
proposition made up of a toto-partial and a parti-total negative ; 
or, (for he varies,) of two parti-total negatives. — In the fourth place, 
Mr De Morgan, thus varying, does not observe, that his precept 
and his example are not at one. — Further, in the fifth place, he 
is here seen strangely to confound the hypothetical process of 
thought, prior to all negation, with the subsequent categorical 
negation itself; and still more strangely, to limit the common 
hypothetical preliminary to this form exclusively. Adhering to 
the present form, and to our previous example, the reasoner says 
to himself: — " The proposition, — ' All triangle is all trilateral,' is 
false, if case 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, one or more, be true ; but 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 639* 

case 4 alone, or cases 4 and 5 together, are true, therefore," &c. 
After this silent hypothetical preliminary, he categorically states 
his contradictory denial. The process is the same, where there 
is only one possible alternative, when, consequently, the proposi- 
tion supporting the denial is itself directly and not disjunctively 
contradictory of the denegand. We think antecedently : — " If 
' Aristotle is a philosopher,' be true, then ' Aristotle is not a 
philosopher,' must be false, and vice versa; but that is true ; 
therefore this is false." We then openly state the negation.* — 
Mr De Morgan goes on to the second form. 

2. — Parti-partial Negation. To this Mr De Morgan makes the 
following objection : — 

" Thirdly, the proposition ' Some Xs are not some Fs,' has no funda- 
mental proposition which denies it, and not even a compound of other pro- 
positions. It is then open to the above objection : and to others peculiar 
to itself. It is what I have called (F. L., p. 153) a spurious proposition, as 
long as either of its names applies to more than one instance. And the 
denial is as follows : — ' There is, but one X, and but one F, and X is F.' 
Unless we know beforehand that there is but one soldier, and one animal, 
and that soldier the animal, we cannot deny that ' some soldiers are not 
some animals.' 1 Whenever we know enough of X and Y to bring forward 
' some Xs are not some Fs,' as what could be conceived to have been false, we 
know more, namely, ' No X is F,' which, when X and Y are singular, is 
true or false with ' some Xs are not some Fs.' " 

Here also Mr De Morgan wholly misunderstands the nature 
and purport of the form which he professes to criticise. He calls 
it " a spurious proposition." Spurious in law means a bad kind 
of bastard. This is, however, not only a legitimate, for it 
expresses one of the eight necessary relations of propositional 
terms, but, within its proper sphere, one of the most important 

* In reference to this objection of Mr De Morgan, it has been acutely 
observed by the ingenious critic previously quoted : — " The true contradic- 
tory we take to be, ' all A is not all B,' which, like the original proposition, 
may be treated collectively or distributively, i. e. as a singular or as an uni- 
versal proposition. In the latter case it is compatible with one of three dis- 
tinct assertions, ' no A is B,' ; some A is not B,' ' some B is not A ; ' but the 
opponent does not commit himself to any one of the three. He denies only 
to the extent in which the original proposition was asserted, and no further ; 
and hence, in proportion as the affirmation is definite, the negation will be 
indefinite.^ (North British Review, vol. xv., p. 116.) This, it will be 
observed, is in principle the same with what has just been alleged. 



640* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

of the forms, which Logic comprehends, and which logicians have 
neglected. It may, indeed, and that easily, be illogically per- 
verted. It may be misemployed to perform the function which 
other forms are peculiarly adapted more effectually to discharge ; 
it may be twisted to sever part of one notion from part of another, 
the two total notions being already perhaps thought as distinct ; 
— and then, certainly, in this relation, it may be considered 
useless : — but in no relation can it ever logically be denominated 
" spurious." For why ? Whatever is operative in thought, must 
be taken into account, and consequently be overtly expressible in 
logic; for logic must be, as to be it professes, an unexclusive 
reflex of thought, and not merely an arbitrary selection — a series 
of elegant extracts, out of the forms of thinking. Whether the 
form that it exhibits as legitimate be stronger or weaker, be 
more or less frequently applied ; — that, as a material and contin- 
gent consideration, is beyond its purview. — But the form in ques- 
tion is, as said, not only legitimate — not " spurious," — it is most 
important. 

What then is the function which this form is peculiarly, — is, 
indeed, alone, competent to perform ? — A parti-partial negative is 
the proposition in which, and in which exclusively, we declare a 
whole of any kind to be divisible. Some A is not some A ; — 
this is the judgment of divisibility and of division* ; the negation 
of this judgment (and of its corresponding integrant) in the asser- 
tion that A has no some, no parts, is the judgment of indivisi- 
bility, of unity, of simplicity. This form is implicitly at work in 
all the sciences, and it has only failed in securing the attention of 
logicians as an abstract form, because, in actual use, it is too 
familiar to be notorious, lying, in fact, unexpressed and latescent 
in every concrete application. Even in Logic itself it is indis- 
pensable. In that science it constitutes no less than the peculiar 
formula of the great principle of Specification (and Individualisa- 
tion), that is the process by which a class (genus or species) is 
divided into its subject parts, — the counter process, to wit, of 
Generification. And this great logical formula is to be branded 
by logical writers as " spurious." ! No doubt, the particularity, 
as a quantity easily understood, is very generally elided in exprcs- 

* Looking to the table of Breadth and Depth (p. 644*), and taking the 
highest genus, we say : u Some A is not some A ; for some A is A E, whilst 
some A is A \E" ; and so on. — See also above, p. 163. 



PARTI-PARTIAL NEGATION. 641* 

sion, though at work in thought ; or it is denoted by a substi- 
tute. Meaning, we avoid saying, — " Some men are not some 
men." This we change, perhaps, into " men are not men," or 
" how different are men from men," or " man from man," or 
" these from those," or " some from other," &c. Still " some is 
not some" lies at the root ; and when we oppose " other," " some 
other," &c. to " some," it is evident, that " other" is itself only 
obtained as the result of the negation, which, in fact, it pleonasti- 
cally embodies. For " other than" is only a synonyme for " is 
not;" " other (or some other) A" is convertible with " not some 
A" ; whilst there is implied by " this," " not that;" by " that," 
" not this;" and by " the other," " neither this nor that:" and 
so on. Here we must not confound, the logical with the rhe- 
torical, the necessary in thought with the agreeable in expres- 
sion. 

Following Mr De Morgan in his selected example, and not 
even transcending his more peculiar science : in the first place, as 
the instance of division I borrow his logical illustration from the 
class " soldier." Now in what manner is this generic notion 
divided, into species ? We say to ourselves : — " Some Soldier is 
not some Soldier ; for some Soldier is (all) Infantry, some Soldier 
is (all) Cavalry, &c. ; and (any) Infantry is not (any) Cavalry." 
A parti-partial negative is the only form of judgment for division, 
of what kind soever be the whole ; (and Mr De Morgan can state 
for it no other.) — Again, in the second place, as the example of 
indivisibility: " Some of this Point, is not some of this (same) 
Point." Such a proposition, Mr De Morgan, as a mathemati- 
cian, cannot admit, for a mathematical point is, ex hypothesi, 
without some, — without some and some, — without parts, same and 
other ; it is indivisible. He says, indeed, that a parti-partial 
negative cannot be denied. But if he be unable to admit, he 
must be able to deny ; and it would be a curious — a singular ano- 
maly, if logic afforded no competent form for so ordinary a nega- 
tion ; if we could not logically deny, that Socrates is a class, — 
that an individual is a universal, — that the thought of an indi- 
visible unit is the thought of a divisible plurality. 

3. — Quantities of Breadth and Depth* — I now proceed to con- 

* This distinction, as limited to the doctrine of single notions, was signal- 
ized by the Port-Royal Logicians, under the names of Extension and Com- 



642* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

sider Mr De Morgan's observations on these quantities, (pp. 29, 
sq.) constituting, as they do, the central doctrine of an adequate 
system of syllogism ; but I regret to be again obliged to show, 
that he radically misunderstands what he attempts to illustrate. 
These, which are merely views of the same relation from opposite 
points, Mr De Morgan regards as things in themselves different. 
The reading of a proposition in depth, in contrast to its reading 
in breadth, " is," he says, " not another reading of the same 
proposition, but another proposition, derived inferentially , though 
not syllogistically, by aid of the dictum de major e et minor e" 
He endeavours subsequently to prove, " that a neiv distinction is 
introduced ; and, farther, that the two modes of reading are not- 
convertible ; the extensive mode gives the intensive, but not vice 
versa in all cases." This, after an elaborate detail, he calls : " an 
important distinction. In the affirmative, any portion of the 
intension of the predicate may be affirmed of the subject ; in the 
negative, it is not true that any portion of the intension of the pre- 
dicate may be denied of the subject. Thus, 6 No planet moves in 
a circle,' gives us a right to deny any constitutive attribute of 
circular motion to that of a planet, but not any attribute ; not, 
for instance, the progression through every longitude." 

This suffices to show how completely Mr De Morgan mistakes 
the great principle : — The predicate of the predicate is, with the 
predicate, affirmed or denied, of the subject. In both cases, in 
negatives equally as in affirmatives, the rule is thoroughgoing. 
To say nothing of affirmation, touching which there is no dispute, 
— All that enters into the predicate notion is denied of the sub- 
ject, if the predicate itself be denied. There is no exception. 
The rule is absolute ; and, in reference to Breadth and Depth, 

prehension; Leibnitz and his followers preferred the more antithetic titles 
of Extension and Intension, though Intension be here somewhat deflected 
from its proper meaning — that of Degree ; and the Quantitas Ambitus and 
Quantitas Complexes has, among sundiy other synon vines, been employed 
— not exclusively, in modern times, for Aristotle uses to Trs^sxoy and to Trs^te- 
%6usvov. — The best expression, I think for the distinction is Breadth (IlAaTo?, 
Latitudo), and Depth (B«0o?, Profunditas). This nomenclature, which I 
have long employed, was borrowed from certain of the ancient Greek logi- 
cians ; but as their works have been, for long, rarely and perfunctorily looked 
into, this neglect may account for the oblivion in which the antiquity of 
these terms has remained, even after the distinction, which they best deno- 
minate, had obtained a renovated importance. 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 643* 

there is no difference whatever between " constitutive " and 
" attributive," between necessary and contingent, between pecu- 
liar and common. It is of no consequence, what has antecedently 
been known, what is newly discovered. These are merely mate- 
rial affections. We have only to consider what it is we formally 
think. In fact, if this principle be not universally right, if Mr 
De Morgan be not altogether wrong, my extension of the doc- 
trine of Breadth and Depth, in correlation, from notions to propo- 
sitions and syllogisms, has been only an egregious blunder. I 
am, therefore, bound to do battle for it, as pro aris et focis ; and, 
fortunately, its vindication is of the easiest. 

" Leibnitz is not Newton." Here the individual, Leibnitz, is 
definitely, is contradictorily, denied of the individual, Newton. 
Nothing of Leibnitz is declared to be anything of Newton ; and vice 
versa. Thus, every attribute comprehended in our thought of 
Leibnitz, be it his humanity, be it the wearing of his wig awry, 
is, in this proposition, virtually denied of Newton. — But, again, 
we say, " Leibnitz is a mathematician." Now, in so far as the 
notion of mathematician is in this proposition affirmed to be con- 
tained in the thought of Leibnitz, " mathematician " is mediately 
deniable of Newton. So much is certain. But do we herefrom 
infer, — is this tantamount to saying, — " Newton is not a mathe- 
matician," as a general negative, and in the sense of no or not 
any mathematician ? Assuredly not. For this would be to deny 
of Newton more than is comprehended in the notion affirmatively 
predicated of Leibnitz. Let us consider what is meant by the 
proposition, — " Leibnitz is a mathematician." " A mathema- 
tician " does not here imply all, every, or even any mathemati- 
cian, but some mathematician, — a certain mathematician ; and 
this particular 'e, — be it vagum, be it signatum, — this some or certain 
mathematician which we affirm of Leibnitz, we do deny of New- 
ton, in denying him to be Leibnitz. To take Mr De Morgan's 
own example : We do not universally deny of a planet any pro- 
gression through every longitude, in saying, " No planet moves 
in a circle ;" but we deny of it particularly some such progres- 
sion, — to wit, a circular. More, indeed, we could not, from the 
proposition. For all circular progression through every longi- 
tude is only some, — is only a certain kind of, progression through, 
&c. Progression, &c., is the genus ; circular progression, &c, is 
the species. — This, by the way, is an instance of the necessity in 



644* 



APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 



logic of a toto-partial negative, though, as shewn, such proposi- 
tional form has been neglected or proscribed by logical authors. 

{Note. — As others, besides Mr De Morgan, have misunderstood this mat- 
ter, I may subjoin the following Diagram ; representing Breadth and Depth, 
with the relations of Affirmation and Negation to these quantities. 







Line of 


Breadth. 








A 


A 


A 


A 


A 


A 


\A 


K 


E 


E 


E 


E 


E 


\E: 




I 


I 


I 


I 


\I 




P 

fa 
o 











\o 








u 


U 


\U. 




k! 


Y 


\Y 








z|z|z 







Aff. 



A 



Neg. 






V 



Ground of Eeality. 



In the preceding Table there are represented : — by A, A, &c, the highest 
genus or widest attribute ; by Y, the lowest species or narrowest attribute ; 
whilst the other four horizontal series of vowels typify the subaltern genera 
and species, or the intermediate attributes. The vowels are reserved exclu- 
sively for classes, or common qualities ; whereas the consonants z, z', z", (and 
which to render the contrast more obtrusive are not capitals,) represent 
individuals or singulars. Every higher class or more common attribute is 
supposed (in conformity with logical precision) to be dichotomised, — to be 
divided into two by a lower class or attribute, and its contradictory or nega- 
tive. This contradictory, of which only the commencement appears, is 
marked by an italic vowel, preceded by a perpendicular line ( | ) signifying 
not or non, and analogous to the minus ( — ) of the mathematicians. This 
being understood, the Table at once exhibits the real identity and rational 
differences of Breadth and Depth, which, though denominated quantities, 
are, in reality, one and the same quantity, viewed in counter relations and 
from opposite ends. Nothing is the one, which is not, pro tanto, the other. 

In Breadth : the supreme genus (A, A, &c.) is, as it appears, absolutely the 
greatest whole ; an individual (z) absolutely the smallest part ; whereas the 
intermediate classes are each of them a relative part or species, by reference 
to the class and classes above it ; a relative whole or genus, by reference to 
the class or classes below it. — In Depth : the individual is absolutely the 
greatest whole, the highest genus is absolutely the smallest part ; whilst 
every relatively lower class or species, is relatively a greater whole than the 
class, classes, or genera, above it. — The two quantities are thus, as the dia- 
gram represents, precisely the inverse of each other. The greater the 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 645* 

Breadth, the less the Depth ; the greater the Depth, the less the Breadth : 
and each, within itself, affording the correlative differences of whole and part, 
each, therefore, in opposite respects, contains and is contained. But, for dis- 
tinction's sake, it is here convenient to employ a difference, not altogether arbi- 
trary, of expression. We should say : — " containing and contained under" 
for Breadth ; — " containing and contained in" for Depth. This distinction, 
which has been taken by some modern logicians, though unknown to many of 
them, was not observed by Aristotle. We find him (to say nothing of other an- 
cient logicians,) using the expression h 6'a«j etuctt.or uvoi^stu, for either whole. 
Though different in the order of thought (ratione), the two quantities are 
identical in the nature of things (re). Each supposes the other ; and Breadth 
is not more to be distinguished from Depth, than the relations of the sides, 
from the relations of the angles, of a triangle. In effect it is precisely the 
same reasoning, whether we argue in Depth, — " z' is (i. e. as subject, con- 
tains in it the inherent attribute) some Y ; all Y is some U ; all U is some 
O ; all O is some I ; all I is some E ; all E is some A ;— therefore, z' is some 
A : " or whether we argue in Breadth, — " Some A is (i. e. as class, contains 
under it the subject part) all E ; some E is all I ; some I is all O ; some O is 
all U ; some U is all Y ; some Y is z'; — therefore, some A is zV The two 
reasonings, internally identical, are externally the converse of each other ; 
the premise and term, which in Breadth is major, in Depth is minor.* In 
syllogisms also, where the contrast of the two quantities is abolished, there, 
with the difference of figure, the differences of major and minor premise and 
term fall likewise. In truth, however, common language in its enounce- 
ment of propositions is here perhaps more correct and philosophical than the 
technical language of logic itself. For as it is only an equation — only an 
affirmation of identity, or its negation, which is, in either quantity, proposed ; 
therefore the substantive verb, (is, is not,) used in both cases, speaks more 
accurately, than the expressions, contained, (or not contained) in of the one, 
contained, (or not contained) under of the other. In fact, the two quantities 
and the two quantifications have by Logicians been neglected together. 

This Table (the principle of which becomes more palpably demonstrative, 
when the parts of the table are turned into the parts of a circular machine), 
exhibits all the mutual relations of the counter quantities. — 1°, It represents 
the classes, as a series of resemblances thought as one, (by a repetition of 

* Though the theory of the syllogism in Depth (far less in both quantities con- 
junctly) was not generalised by Aristotle nor by any of the ancient logicians, 
it seems to have wrought unconsciously in determining the order of the pre- 
mises. Our common order, that of Breadth, is derived from Boethius ; and 
his influence was limited to the West — to the Latin schools. The Greeks, 
Arabians, Jews, &c, generally adhered to the order which, before Boethius, 
was, with few exceptions, prevalent in the Latin world; — the proposition 
which we call the minor premise standing first. The truth in this matter 
has been simply reversed by modern scholars and historians of philosophy. 
To quote only the most recent authority : Waitz, in his late valuable edi- 
tion of the Organon, has, I see, followed the learned editors of Apuleius, in 
this universal error. Even the great John Albert Fabricius is at fault. 



646* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

the same letter in the same series,) but as really distinct (by separating 
lines). Thus, A is only A, not A, A, A, &c. ; some Animal is not some 
Animal ; one class of Animals is not all, every, or any other ; this Animal 
is not that ; Socrates is not Plato ; z is not z'. On the other hand, E is E 
A ; and YisYUOIEA; every lower and higher letter in the series 
coalescing uninterruptedly into a series of reciprocal subjects and predicates, 
as shewn by the absence of all discriminating lines. Thus, Socrates (z'), 
is Athenian (Y), Greek (U), European (O), Man (I), Mammale (E), Ani- 
mal (A). Of course the series must be in grammatical and logical harmony. 
We must not collate notions abstract and notions concrete. — 2°, The Table 
shews the inverse correlation of the two quantities in respect of amount. 
For example : A (i. e. A, A, &c.) the highest genus is represented as having 
six times the Breadth of Y ; whilst Y (i, e. Y — A) the lowest species, has 
six times the Depth of A. — 3°, The Table manifests all the classes, as in 
themselves unreal, subjective, ideal ; for these are merely fictions or artifices 
of the mind, for the convenience of thinking. Universals only exist in 
nature, as they cease to be universal in thought ; that is, as they are reduced 
from general and abstract attributes to individual and concrete qualities. 
A — Y are only truly objective as distributed through z, z', z", &c. ; and in 
that case they are not universals. As Boethius expresses it : — " Omne quod 
est, eo quod est, singulare est." — 4°, The opposition of class to class, through 
contradictory attributes, is distinguished by lines different from those mark- 
ing the separation of one part of the same class from another. Thus, Ani- 
mal, or Sentien try-organised, (A), is contrasted with Not- animal, or Not- 
sentiently- organised, ( | A), by lines thicker than those which merely dis- 
criminate one Animal (A), from another (A). — Thus : 

Touching Propositions : — An affirmative proposition is merely an equation 
of the quantities of its Subject and Predicate, in Breadth or in Depth indif- 
ferently, and the consequent declaration of the coalescence, pro tanto, of the 
two terms themselves into a single notion ; a negative proposition, on the 
contrary, is an enouncement of the non-equation of the quantities — of the 
non-identity of the terms. Every proposition may, in fact, be cast, be con- 
sidered, at will, in either quantity, or in neither ; therefore, if a competent 
notation we have, we must have one, which in every proposition is able to 
represent, at once, both the counter- quantities, and even to sublimate them 
into one. 

Touching Syllogisms : — A competent notation of syllogism, must, in like 
manner, avail consistently to exhibit all the syllogistic figures, as determined 
by the several relations of the two quantities to the middle term ; and it 
must also be able of itself to manifest the differences of mood, abstracting 
from the positive differences of figure altogether. For of these differences, 
the modal is essential, the schematic is contingent. — Finally, if our system 
of notation be complete, we must possess not only one notation capable of 
representing, in different, though analogous, diagrams, syllogisms of every 
figure and of no figure ; but another, which shall, at once and in the same 
diagram, exhibit every syllogistic mode, apart from all schematic differences, 
be they positive, be they privative. All this my two schemes of notation, in 
conjunction, profess to do ; and if I be not mistaken, all this they fully and 
simply accomplish. 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 647* 

In regard to the relation which the quantities of Depth and Breadth bear 
to the qualities of Affirmation and Negation, it is hardly necessaiy to say- 
more than has been stated above (p. 625*). Affirmation follows the ascend- 
ing order, that of superordination ; Negation follows the descending order, 
that of subordination. This is shown by the arrows. In regard to the 
horizontal order, that of co-ordination : in the Affirmation of one co-ordinate, 
(individual or class,) the other, or others, are thereby denied ; but from the 
Negation of one co-ordinate we cannot infer the Affirmation of any other, — 
unless the subject belong to the immediately higher class, and that class be 
dichotomised, by contradiction. 

I stated above, (p. 146,) that the Modes, which from their generality, had 
been introduced into Formal Logic, are merely Material, — themselves mate- 
rial predicates, (perhaps, subjects,) or material affections of the predicate, 
(perhaps subject) ; — that these modes stand to each other in the relation of 
genus and species ; — and that they may, therefore, be reduced to form and 
logical integrity. I may here briefly explain my doctrine on this point. 

All predication is the predication of existence; and the predication of 
existence is either the predication of existence simply, purely, absolutely, or 
the predication of existence not simply, purely, absolutely, but under cer- 
tain limitations, manners, modes, — modal predication. Now, these modes 
are, in themselves, affections of this or that particular matter, of which 
Logic, as a formal science, can take no account. Modal predication is thus, 
immediately and in itself, extra-logical. But if we can reduce these modes 
to those relations with which Logic is conversant ; in that case, Logic may 
mediately deal with them, as it deals with all other objects ; that is, consi- 
der them, not as they really exist, in and for themselves, but as they come 
under the forms of the understanding — the forms of thought, as thought. 
Such relations are those of containing and contained, in the counter quanti- 
ties of Depth and Breadth, — in a word, the relations of Genus, Species, 
Individual. That the modes which, without such reduction, have, to the 
utter confusion of the science, been intruded into Logic, may be so reduced, 
is, I think, possible; and the following scheme will show how I would 
realise the possibility. The whole difficulty of the problem lies in the vague- 
ness and ambiguity of language ; and we have only to fix the meaning of the 
words, to render obvious the logical dependency of the things. 

Modes. 



(A.) Possible. (1-4.) Impossible. 



(A, E.) Actual. (A, | E.) Potential. 



(A, E, I.) Necessary. (A, E, | I.) Contingent. 

(A.) The Possible, (to Imutov, possibile, &c.,) what can be, zr the not impos- 
sible. 

(\A.) The Impossible, (to oLIvuhtw, impossibile, &c.,) what cannot be, = the 
not possible. — This and the preceding are congenera, contradictory of 
each other. 

(A, E.) The Actual, (to h kvigyax, to h hTihi%iia., actuale, quod in actu, in 
esse, est, &c.,) what is now, = the not potential. 



048* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL- (B.) 

(A, \E.) The Potential, (to h ^vuocf^st, potentiale, quod in posse, in poten- 
tia, est, &c.,) what is not at this, but may be, at an other time, = the 
not actual. — This and that immediately preceding are conspecies, and 
mutual contradictories. In a logical relation, these have been over- 
looked by Aristotle and the logicians ; for the i>7ra.(>%ovaoi k^otowis of 
the Philosopher, is the pure or non-modal proposition, and altogether 
different from the predication of actuality. 

(A, E, I.) The Necessary, (to dvayxoilov, necessarium, quod necesse est, 
&c.,) what is (now), and needs must be, = the not contingent. 

(A, E, \I.) The Contingent, (to hli-^o^ivou, contingens, &c.,) what is (now), 
but needs-not be, = the not necessary. — This is a coordinate of the 
last previous, and they contradict each other. 

Discounting, therefore, some ambiguities of a mere grammatical interest, 
(and on which, in these hints, I cannot even touch,) it is manifest, that the 
Propositional Modes stand to each other in the formal relations of Subordi- 
nation, Superordination, Coordination; and that, following the rules of 
genera and species, their predication falls under common logical govern- 
ment. 

Logicians, in this affair, have been guilty of a fivefold abberration. — In 
the first place, they ought not to have defiled the purity of their formal 
science with a subject of merely material consideration — a subject to be by 
them discussed, only to be excluded or subordinated. — In the second place, 
they ought not to have dealt, as logical, with what was properly of meta- 
physical, or merely of grammatical, concernment. — In the third place, they 
ought not to have treated, as pertaining to the copula, what belongs to the 
collated terms. — In the fourth place, they ought not to have confused their 
doctrine by introducing as foreign, special, complex, and difficult, what admits 
of reduction to logical precept, common, simple, and easy. — In the fifth 
place, in their enumeration of these modes, they ought to have been exhaus- 
tive; they ought not to have omitted the actual, and its conspecies the 
potential.) 

4. — Mr De Morgan (p. 27) asserts : — " Sir William Hamilton 
acknowledges, that my own numerically definite system contains 
his system," &c. — To this I answer : 

In the first place, "the system,"* which here and elsewhere 

* Mr De Morgan loves to talk paternally of logical "Systems;" and as 
every new error is to him the occasion of a new system, at least of a new 
nomenclature, no man has misconceived, misadopted, and misnamed so 
many. In his present contribution, (I can hardly claim acquaintance with 
his work on Formal Logic,) we have baptised, or rebaptised, or fathered by 
him, in Syllogistic alone :— 1°, " The Cumular System ; " 2°, " the Exemplar 
System;" 3°, "the System of Contraries;" 4°, '* my own Numerically 
Definite System." All mistakes. This we have seen, indeed, of the two 
still-born, but not anonymous, monstrosities, which stand first ; the third is 
only the old doctrine of Infinites, under a new and marvellous misnomer; 



LAMBERT'S SYLLOGISTIC ; PLOUCQUET'S CANON. 649* 

Mr De Morgan fondly calls " his own/' belongs to Lambert, by 
whom, if not first found, it was most scientifically and fully deve- 
loped ; in like manner, as the ingenious though inadequate canon 
of syllogism, propounded by Mr De Morgan, in his present 
memoir, (see p. 630*,) is, in all respects, the exclusive property 
of Ploucquet. (Compare : — Lambert's Organon, (1764,) Dianoi- 
ologie, § 193, Phsenomenologie, §§ 157, 187-190, 192, 193, 
204-211, 220, &c. : Ploucquet' s Methodus demonstrandi Syllo- 
gismos, ope unius regulse, (1763,) pp. 2, sq. ; his Methodus calcu- 
landi in Logicis, (1763,) §§ 37, sq. ; and (beside his Fundamenta 
and Institutiones Philosophise Theoretics,) his more matured 
work, the Elementa Philosophise Contemplative, (1778,) §§ 120, 
sq.) With the logical writings of both these mathematical philo- 
sophers, Mr De Morgan was acquainted. It would, indeed, have 
been little «hort of a miracle, had he, ignorant even of the com- 
mon principles of Logic, been able, of himself, to rise to generali- 
sations so lofty and so accurate, as are supposed in the peculiar 
doctrines of both the rival Logicians, Lambert and Ploucquet, — 
how useless soever these may in practice prove to be. 

In the second place, I never "acknowledged," — I never dreamt 
of " acknowledging," that " the numerically definite system," 
(whoever were its author,) " contained," what may properly be 
called " my system." For such is not the case. I certainly, 
indeed, " acknowledged," when I became aware of the fact, that 
the minor doctrine of the ultra-total quantification of the middle 
term, had been anticipated by Lambert, though never designated 
by him, and neglected, not irrationally, by other logicians. This 
doctrine, which was generalised, (and first named) by me, inde- 
pendently of any predecessor, — which is, in fact, the only formal 
generalisation in the " definite " scheme at all, is not, however, 
peculiar to my views, more than any other logical truth. 

5. — But, I must not forget : — Mr De Morgan (pp. 11-13) has 
displayed a scheme of Syllogistic Notation, which he propounds 
as the same, in principle, with mine — (with the fragment to wit, 
given by Mr Thomson,) but as an improvement. (As for me, 
however, I discover no analogy, and willingly waive all claim to 
the invention.) The original he admits to be of the simplest and 



whilst the fourth, so far from being a neglected foundling, to be dealt with 
as his own by the first charitable finder, is the legitimate, though puny, off- 
spring of an illustrious parentage. 



650* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

easiest, nor does he pretend, that, in any respect, it is either 
erroneous or inadequate. His own improvement, on the other 
hand, if complexity be perfection, must be pronounced a chef 
d'ceuvre. It accomplishes (if it did accomplish) its purpose, 
through the employment of an apparatus of a fivefold multi- 
plicity. A triad of ordinary letters, — a polygram of fourteen 
lines, of three various sorts, — eked out, and (it would be) inter- 
preted by nearly a dozen arbitrary and unknown signs ; all these 
are thrown together into a kind of heteroclite and heterogeneous 
circumvallation, the lines flanked, on one side, by something in the 
shape of a chevaux-de-frise, horrent with mysterious spiculse, — 
into a kind of geometrico-algebraic medley, which Professor De 
Morgan calls " pictorial," but which paints, describes, typifies 
nothing, even imaginable ; and this hybrid and multifarious 
co-acervation of near thirty elements, partly ostensive, partly 
symbolical, is gravely proposed to represent a single syllogism in 
its simplicity, — a syllogism, too, intendedly categorical, but which 
turns out to be, in reality, disjunctive. In fact, among the 
numerous schemes (some twenty-eight I know,) of logical nota- 
tion, — nay even among his own, — none was ever yet so decom- 
pound, confusive, perverse, not to say unintelligible, not to say 
erroneous. It concentrates every vice competent to such repre- 
sentation ; it is at once contorted, operose and ineffectual. Com- 
paring it with other schemes, Mr De Morgan asserts, this new 
complexus to be : — " more convenient," — it is beyond human 
patience, if not simply impossible ; " more suggestive" — it suggests 
error, when not defying comprehension. We need hardly, there- 
fore, be surprised, that, in the end, Mr De Morgan should actually 
laud the farrago for expressing diametrically opposite things 
(" the universality of the subject," " the particularity of the pre- 
dicate,") by the self same representation. Apart, indeed, from 
his general tendency to mistake, and his usual play at cross pur- 
poses with thought and language,* all Mr De Morgan's illustra- 

* Mr De Morgan professedly identifies — universal, affirmative, conclusive, 
possible, conjunctive, convertible, singular, &c, and particular, negative, 
inconclusive, impossible, disjunctive, inconvertible, plural, &c. ; whilst, know- 
ingly or unknowingly, lie reverses — definite and indefinite, collective and dis- 
tributive, contrary and contradictory, formal and material, &c. Heretofore, 
he even confounded terms and propositions, the middle and the conclusion of 
a syllogism. Mr De Morgan's " System " (of Systems) is " the Witches' 
cauldron." 



MR DE MORGAN'S NOTATIONS. 651* 

tions, whether ostensive or symbolic, of logical relations, conduce 
only to " darken counsel." Always arbitrary and ever complex, 
these are ultimately also various. Each new book, — new edition, 
— new paper is, in fact, a new construction ; and every emenda- 
tion of a former scheme is equally unfortunate with the primary 
failure. Mr De Morgan is a profound mathematician, and other- 
wise an able man. But philosophically, while strong at compli- 
cation, his genius seems impotent either to simplify or to evolve. 
Out of mathematics, he can add but not subtract, multiply but 
not divide. Yet if wanting, as we must confess, in the art of 
making the difficult easy ; no one, it should be proclaimed, is a 
more accomplished adept, in the counter craft of making the easy 
difficult. 

6. — Before concluding : though unable to expose them in articu- 
late detail, I must protest, in general, against various ignorances 
and absurdities, for which Mr De Morgan (unwittingly always) 
makes me to be responsible. Such are certain doctrines or 
examples laid to my account on pages 2, 12, 20, 21, 29, 30, 35, 
36, &c. — But now to terminate : — 

Apart from the exposition of scientific truths : I have been thus 
copious in refutation, not from any importance I attach to these 
critical objections in themselves, or with reference to myself; but 
mainly from the great respectability of the critic in his peculiar 
department, enabling me to signalise, by another memorable 
example, how compatible is mathematical talent with philosophical 
inaptitude, nay, how adverse even, are mathematical habits of 
thought, to sound logical thinking. Mr De Morgan has long- 
held highest rank as a British mathematician. Latterly, wishing 
to be more, he has ventured to speculate on the theory of rea- 
soning : and the " Philosophical Society" of the mathematical 
University of Cambridge, giving his memoirs upon logic an impri- 
matur, have deemed them worthy of publication in their Transac- 
tions. Now the present paper, to say nothing of the others, 
exhibits, from first to last, only the blind confidence (shall I call 
it, or confident blindness ?) with which a mathematical author can 
treat a logical subject ; breaking down, though never conscious 
of his falls, in every, even the most rudimentary movement : — 
Author, Memoir, and Society (curiously) concurring to manifest 
anew the real value of the Cambridge crotchet, — that " Mathe- 
matics are a mean of forming logical habits, better than Logic 
itself" This crotchet is, however, a melancholy absurdity ; for 



652* APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

it is a crotchet which has confessedly turned that great semi- 
nary of education into " a slaughter-house of intellects," — even 
of lives. It has been said of old, — " There is no royal road 
to Mathematics"; and we have again authority and demonstra- 
tion, that Mathematics are not a road of any kind to Logic, whe- 
ther to Logic speculative, or to Logic practical. A road to Logic, 
did I say ? It is well, if Mathematics, from the inevitability of 
their process, and the consequent inertion, combined with rash- 
ness, which they induce, do not positively ruin the reasoning 
habits of their votary. Some knowledge of their object-matter 
and method is requisite to the philosopher ; but their study should 
be followed out temperately and with due caution. A mathema- 
tician in contingent matter is like an owl in day -light. Here, the 
wren pecks at the bird of Pallas, without anxiety for beak or talon ; 
and there, the feeblest reasoner feels no inferiority to the strongest 
calculator. It is true, no doubt, that a power of mathematical, 
and a power of philosophical — of general logic, may, sometimes, 
be combined; but the individual who unites both, reasons well 
out of necessary matter, from a still resisting vigour of intellect, 
and in spite, not in consequence, of his geometric or algebraic 
dexterity. He is naturally strong ; nor a mere cypherer — a 
mere demonstrator : and this is the explanation, why Mr De 
Morgan, among other mathematicians, so often argues right. 
Still, had Mr De Morgan been less of a Mathematician, he might 
have been more of a philosopher. And be it remembered, that 
mathematics and dram-drinking tell, especially, in the long run. 
For a season, I admit, Toby Philpot may be the Champion of 
England ; and Warburton testifies, — " It is a thing notorious, 
that the oldest mathematician in England is the ivorst reasoner 
in it." 

So much for Mathematical Logic ; so much for Cambridge Phi- 
losophy. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(A) ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND REGULATION, 

IN REFERENCE TO THE UNIVERSITY 

OF EDINBURGH. 

The following is an extract from the " General Report of the 
Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of Municipal 
Corporations in Scotland, presented to both Houses of Parliament 
by command of his Majesty ;" 1835. Coinciding, as I do, with 
the recommendations of this Report, in so far as they go, and, in 
the prevalent unacquaintance with the subject, they perhaps could 
not go farther ; I may premise, that the experience of the sixteen 
years which has since elapsed tends strongly to confirm, not only 
the expedience, but the urgent necessity of a reform in the Patron- 
age and Regulation of the University of Edinburgh. 

I add nothing to what has been said above, (p. 348, sq.), as to 
the principles and mode of academical patronage, but a single obser- 
vation : — that, whilst the -removal of religious disabilities in the 
appointment to lay Professorships, may, in itself, be a measure both 
equitable and advantageous, yet, with a board of patrons like the 
Edinburgh Town Council, nothing certainly could be anticipated 
more detrimental than its operation. In truth, so far from the 
chairs being thus thrown open to merit, apart from all sectarian 
considerations, sectarian considerations would prevail against 
merit, far more perniciously than heretofore. For, in that event, 
the various religious persuasions would strain every effort to 
secure an election to the Council of their correligionists ; among 
these councillors coalitions would be formed and agreements con- 
cluded ; so that, in the end, the academical body would shew 
nothing better than a heterogeneous collection of obscure secta- 
rian nominees. A repeal of the present tests would thus, either 
finish our civic patronage, or sink our University still lower. 

In regard to the administration of this University I would 
remark. — The legislative and executive functions (legally or in 
fact) are here exercised by two bodies — the Town Council and 
the Senatus Academicus. But these two bodies are, severally or 



622 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

together, incapable of any due performance of these functions. — 
With honourable exceptions of individual members, the Senatus 
Academicus, as a body, is too numerous (32), and too ill chosen, 
too destitute of liberal erudition or of lofty views, and where not 
indifferent or hopeless, too generally beset with private interests 
counter to the general interests of the school and public, — to be 
able either rightly to legislate for the University, or (without 
intelligent controul) even rightly to administer its laws. — The 
Town Council from its numbers (33), from its relative ignorance 
and incapacity, and from its exposure to all kinds of sinister 
influences, among which not the least dangerous is that of the 
party interests in the professorial body itself, — is not less incom- 
petent to these functions, an incompetence of which, to its honour, 
it seems not altogether unconscious. The consequence of this is, 
that with the exception of occasional fits of spasmodic energy 
from accidental stimuli, the professorial body is left virtually to 
make and to execute the academical laws. One result, of many, 
is shewn in the present state of the Degrees ; which, if they cer- 
tify attendance on certain classes, certify, assuredly, little or no 
proficiency in the graduate. To complain of such abuse, or to 
suggest any means for its correction, would, in the absence of an 
intelligent controuling body, be at present wholly idle. To those 
professors, therefore, who are dissatisfied with the conduct of the 
Senatus Academicus, and not content to co-operate in what they 
feel obliged to condemn ; no other alternative is, in my opinion, 
left, than to retire from any participation in university pro- 
ceedings. — The Commissioners thus report : — 

u The opinion that the Edinburgh system of university patronage has 
worked well arises, we conceive, from the want of any tolerable standard or 
example in this country from which to form an estimate of the manner in 
which the duty of patrons of an university ought to be discharged. 

The Town Council of Edinburgh, consisting of thirty-three members, is, in 
our opinion, too large a body to discharge, with advantage, the duties of 
patrons of literary and scientific offices. So great a number cannot possess 
that unity of purpose which would enable them to anticipate a canvass, and 
at once fix on the most eligible person to fill each vacancy. Such we con- 
sider to be the duty of university patrons, and we esteem the allowance of a 
canvass for an office in the university, however conducted, to be in itself an 
evil. In a body so numerous, divisions are apt to arise which cannot fail to 
obstruct the fair estimate of the merits of rival candidates. But, above all, 
the feeling of individual responsibility is destroyed, where a good appoint- 
ment can reflect little honour, and a bad one is not felt to throw disgrace 
upon any one elector. 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL MUNICIPAL COMMISSION. 623 

Under the former constitution of the Town Council, a great majority of 
the members were usually merchants and tradesmen, but little qualified, by 
education, to be themselves very competent judges of the literary or scien- 
tific qualifications of others. From that cause also, as well as from their 
number, they were peculiarly open to the influence of personal solicitation, 
and of local prejudice and prepossession. Even under the present constitu- 
tion of the Council, the qualifications which are likely to recommend indivi- 
duals to the choice of their fellow-citizens as Town- Councillors are, in most 
cases, rather those which would fit them for taking an active part in the 
ordinary business of life than such as are calculated to render them suitable 
patrons of an university, and, indeed, their competency for the discharge of 
that particular duty will probably be little regarded. The fluctuating nature 
of the body is besides very unfavourable to the steady and consistent admi- 
nistration of this important trust ; and the political feelings which are so apt 
to iufluence their own appointment are but too likely to affect the course of 
their conduct in matters w T hich ought, of all others, to be exempted from their 
operation. 

Notwithstanding the manifest defects and vices of the system, it must be 
admitted that many men of distinguished eminence have been placed in the 
chairs of this university, and that it has acquired, and hitherto preserved, a 
respectable character as a seminary of learning and science. This, however, 
must not be attributed to any excellence in the existing system of patronage 
and administration ; but is partly owing to the state of medical education 
in the great universities of England, partly to the exclusion of Dissenters 
from those establishments, and, perhaps, above all, to the existence of a sys- 
tem of patronage and management still more objectionable in the other uni- 
versities of Scotland. In the words of one of the gentlemen examined,* 'it 
is the greatest possible mistake, though a very common one, to suppose that 
the success of the university has been owing to this mode of election. Jts 
chief celebrity has been during the last century ; and the rise of Scotland, 
for the hundred years that succeeded the Union, was so irresistible, not only 
in learning, but in every thing, that the greatest abuses might have existed, 
and did exist, and yet the country flourished. I have heard it stated, by the 
highest persons, and in the highest places, that the agricultural and commer- 
cial prosperity of Scotland was owing to the exclusion of the people from any 
share in the representation ; and no doubt these two things, namely, their 
exclusion and their prosperity, did co-exist; so did the prosperity of the 
university and the election by the magistrates ; but there was probably no 
system of election that could have been adopted, at that particular period of 
our history, under which many good professors would not have arisen in the 
metropolis.' ' It is a much truer test of the excellence of any elective 
system to look to the number of ill- qualified persons who have been chosen, 
while well-qualified ones have been rejected. A single flagrant case of this 
description shows the true tendency of the system better than many right 
appointments. It would be indelicate to illustrate this view by examples ; 
but I am confident that the facts would amply illustrate and condemn the 
scheme of placing such elections in any body constituted like the magistrates 

* Mr Solicitor- General (now Lord) Cockburn. 



624 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

of Edinburgh. No one who has lived long here can have any difficulty in 
applying these observations.' 

We have not thought it proper to take evidence with regard to particular 
cases of ill-bestowed patronage, as this could not be done without injuring 
the feelings of individuals, and the admitted and notorious circumstances 
connected with its administration have appeared to us full} 7 to warrant the 
conclusions to which we have come. 

The cases are very few in which the patrons have made offer of a vacant 
chair to any person, however eminent, who had not solicited their support. 
In no case that has come to our knowledge has the Town Council elected a 
foreigner, or an Englishman ; and the instances are comparatively few in 
which persons, not previously connected with Edinburgh, have been success- 
ful in obtaining professorships. Candidates, connected politically or person- 
ally with a prevailing party, have been preferred to others of superior quali- 
fications, and good appointments have frequently been carried by narrow 
majorities. By the junction of two parties supporting inferior candidates, the 
best qualified person has been rejected. But the greatest evil of the system 
is the necessity to which candidates are subjected of trying to procure votes 
by personal canvass. ISTor are the electors assailed only by the solicitation 
of the immediate competitors for the vacant office and their friends. When 
the election of a particular candidate for the existing vacancy would throw 
open a desirable office previously held by him, (as frequently happens in 
vacancies of medical professorships), the influence of all the friends of the 
expectant, in the remotest degree, is brought to bear in their favour. The 
electors are courted as if they were gratuitously conferring a favour, not 
exercising a trust. It is usually found expedient to procure the interference 
of those to whom they are under obligations ; and it is impossible to disguise 
that other considerations are put forward than the merits of the competitors. 
In the words of a learned professor, whose declaration was taken, ' the can- 
didates were compelled to stoop to the level of their electors, and there has 
not been a single instance in which, when a corrupt influence has been ade- 
quately exerted, the most superlative merit, if otherwise unaided, has had 
any chance, while it has often happened that, where merit did actually suc- 
ceed, success was obtained by the very narrowest majorities, and only 
obtained at all by employing the same sinister means which would otherwise 
have been triumphant against it.' And another professor* has observed, 
' that the practices resorted to, on some occasions, to influence the members 
of Council, are such as must offend every man of feeling and principle.' - - 

The Town Council of Edinburgh, as patrons of the university, has been 
found to have the right of regulating the rate of fees,— of prescribing the 
course of study required of candidates for degrees, — of creating, subdividing, 
and suppressing professorships, — and, generally, of directing the internal 
economy of the college. Its interference in these matters is complained of 
by the professors as injudicious and vexatious. We think there can be little 
difference of opinion as to the injurious effects of the internal control thus 
exercised by the Town Council ; and, therefore, whether we be justified or 
not in concluding that the higher branch of patronage, which consists in sup- 



* Evidence of Dr Christison. 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL MUNICIPAL COMMISSION. 625 

plying vacant professorships, ought no longer to be intrusted to the town 
council of Edinburgh, we are clearly of opinion that there is no reason why 
they should continue to administer this part of the duty of patrons, which 
requires an intimate knowledge of the objects and necessities of the college, 
and of the progress and comparative advancement of science and literature 
in it and other academical institutions, and which is more liable than even 
the higher department to gross and frequent abuses. 

The limits of our Commission have precluded us from making any 
inquiry or suggestion regarding that part of the patronage of the universities 
of Scotland which is vested in the Crown, or exercised by the professors of 
each college ; and we are fully aware of the imperfection of any measure 
which would affect only a portion of the university patronage of Edinburgh, 
and should consider any scheme for the reformation of Scotch universities 
unsatisfactory that did not extend to them all. 

Our inquiries have, however, impressed upon us the urgent necessity of 
a change of system in the management of the university of Edinburgh ; and 
as the delay attendant on a more extended reformation renders expedient 
the adoption of a partial measure which may not be inconsistent with 
a general system, if any such should be hereafter adopted for regulating the 
patronage and management of all the universities of Scotland, we beg leave 
to recommend — 

1. That a body of five Curators shall be constituted, in whom shall be 
vested the whole patronage and management of the university of Edinburgh, 
with all the powers at present exercised by the town council in that matter. 

2. That each curator shall hold his office for ten years from the date of 
his appointment, and shall then be re-eligible. 

3. That of these curators two shall be named by the Crown, two by the 
town council of Edinburgh, and one by the Senatus Academicus. 

4. That the curators shall not be members either of the Senatus Aca- 
demicus or town council, and that they shall receive no salary or emolument 
whatever. 

In proposing these outlines of a plan for vesting the patronage and 
government of the university of Edinburgh in a board of Curators, we are 
aware of the objections which may be urged against it. Probably no untried 
measure could be proposed, to which some objections would not be urged. 
We have had in view the system which has been found advantageous in the 
most distinguished foreign universities, and we have endeavoured to adopt 
so much of it as seems to suit the institutions and peculiar views of this 
country. We have the less scruple in proposing so entire a change, that we 
do not think the present system of patronage susceptible of any effectual 
reformation ; and we conceive that almost any change, which should place 
it in the hands of a small and responsible body, would be of advantage to 
the university. 

It may be worthy of consideration, whether, on the supplying of each 
vacancy in the university, the curators should not be bound to lay before 
your Majesty's Government the reasons which have induced them to prefer 
the person appointed to the office. This has been suggested to us as a useful 
check on the exercise of their powers : and we are aware that, in the most 
successful foreign universities, the recommendation of the curators, supported 

2 K 



626 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

by a statement of such reasons, is the foundation of the appointment, which 
flows directly from the Crown. We consider it doubtful, however, whether 
such a precaution is necessary or expedient, where the actual and responsible 
exercise of the duty of patrons is to remain with the curators." (P. 69, sq.) 

The preceding recommendations are by a Royal Commission of 
Municipal Inquiry, appointed under a reforming administration; but 
nearly five years previously, that is in 1830, a Royal Commission 
of Visitation, nominated under a conservative cabinet, " to inquire 
into the state of the Universities and Colleges of Scotland," had 
completed its elaborate investigations, and made its general and 
its special Reports. The opinions of both Commissions are entitled 
to great respect ; for the members of both were, in general, per- 
sons of high intelligence, and all of laudable intentions. The 
Commissioners of Visitation were not specially authorised to inter- 
fere with the academical patronage, as established ; certainly, they 
make no report in regard to the mode or modes of appointing 
Professors. But in matters where the two Commissions both 
report, under external differences an internal agreement will be 
found. Thus, they concur in declaring it inexpedient for the inte- 
rests of education, for the sake of which alone Universities are 
instituted, to leave the power of legislation and ultimate controul 
in the hands of the academical teachers ; and both, accordingly, 
recommend, that this function be intrusted to a small extra- 
academical body, " the Board of Curators " of the one, " the 
University Court " of the other. The recommendations by the 
the Burgh Commissioners touching the Universities, are only 
incidental to the object of their investigations, and are therefore 
necessarily limited ; whereas it was the primary and special object 
proposed to the Commissioners of Visitation, to inquire into, and 
report concerning, every matter of academical interest. I shall 
now, therefore, proceed to make a few extracts from the General 
Report, and the Report relative to the University of Edinburgh, 
by the latter Commission ; and this on points which were beyond 
the consideration of the former. — And first of a Degree in Arts. 

" It has appeared to us to be essentially necessary that the examinations 
for Degrees in Arts should be conducted, as at Oxford and Cambridge, by 
[sworn] Examiners appointed for the purpose, and not by the Professors. 

When the Candidates are examined by the Professors, there is always the 
greatest risk that the Examinations will degenerate into a mere form. The 
qualifications of many will be known to the Professors. The Professors will 
naturally be disposed to be easily satisfied in regard to the qualifications of 
those who acquitted themselves to their satisfaction as Students ; and even 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 627 

if more rigorously conducted, the Examinations will naturally be made to 
correspond to the proficiency acquired in the Classes, and confined to the 
particular topics introduced in their respective Lectures. The character of 
the Professors will in fact be engaged in the success of the Candidate. Each 
will be examining his own pupils. His eminence as a teacher will be inte- 
rested in the result ; and the necessary bias of the mind will be to make the 
Degree the reward of the exertions and progress made in the class. Higher 
attainments will not be deemed necessary, and the Degree would thus soon 
become merely a reward for eminence in the classes, without requiring 
greater exertion, or encouraging greater acquisitions in knowledge. We 
apprehend that any approach to such a state of things would counteract the 
objects which we have in view, and that the Degree would be so indiscrimi- 
nately conferred that it would never be an object of ambition, or be raised in 
public estimation. The experience which has already occurred as to the 
Scotch Universities demonstrates the truth of these remarks, and affords 
conclusive reasons for apprehending that the value of the Degree will not be 
raised if the Examination of Candidates shall be left in the hands of the 
Professors. The utter contempt in which the Degree of Master of Arts is 
held in Scotland, and the notorious inefficiency of the Examinations under 
the existing system, have appeared to us to require that the Examination of 
Candidates shall be conducted on a different footing. The evidence in 
regard to the mode of conferring Degrees in Arts in Edinburgh and Aber- 
deen, exhibits a striking illustration of the necessity of such a change as we 
now propose ; and we do not think that any impartial observer can fail to 
acknowledge that the degradation in public opinion of the Degrees given by 
some of the Scotch Universities has been the result of the manner in which 
they have been hitherto bestowed. We have felt it to be our duty, there- 
fore, to propose that Examiners shall be appointed for the purpose of ascer- 
taining the qualifications of Candidates for Degrees in Arts." (Gen. Rep. 
43.) 

What the Visitors say of a degree in Arts, and of the radical 
vice of the prevalent system of examination, has been only too 
fully confirmed by the experience of the twenty years which have 
since elapsed. This degree, they state, was then " utterly con- 
temptible," and it is utterly contemptible now. In the University 
of Edinburgh, after a temporary expectation of improvement, and 
a sufficient season of trial, the estimate of the " Honour " has 
again justly fallen to the lowest ; for, affording no criterion of 
merit, and lavished upon any dunce who may obtain the favour 
of the individual judges, the " Laurel " is now again principally 
affected by a few humble intellects of the humblest acquirements, 
especially by those resident in England, where a degree in Arts 
is always of a certain reflected estimation. For an Oxford or 
even a Cambridge pass, though it certifies not much, certifies 
always something. 



628 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

The system of examination for degrees in Arts, as realised in 
Edinburgh, violates every principle, and concentrates every 
defect. It is carried on, exclusively, by those who have other 
interests in passing or rejecting, than the competence or incom- 
petence of the candidate ; and every facility, every inducement is 
afforded, to the exercise of partiality. For, 

1. The Professors are the only examiners. 2. The examination 
is strictly private, consisting altogether of written answers to ques- 
tions communicated to the candidate at the time when his responses 
are required. 3. These questions are not previously known to, 
are not proposed by, the Faculty, but remain at the discretion of 
each individual examiner. 4. The answers also are limited to the 
one examiner, who does not communicate them to the Faculty. 
5. The questions (for the minimum) are often, even ludicrously, 
beyond what ought to be demanded. 6. These are sometimes 
relative to fortuitous subjects treated in the examiner's last course 
of lectures, and such as could only reasonably be proposed to the 
auditors of that course. 7. This variation affords an unfair 
advantage to certain individuals, and is otherwise no trial what- 
ever of the general competence of candidates. 8. It is also looked 
upon as constraining extra attendance by candidates on such last 
courses. 9. In general, the candidate is not allowed to approve 
his qualifications by his own choice of books ; nor are fixed books 
or classes of books proposed to him for study. 10. There is no 
law, there are no measures for preventing favour or disfavour ; 
and any incapable may be passed, any respectable candidate may 
be rejected, at the mere will of a majority of any few members of 
the Faculty who may happen to be present at the decisive meet- 
ing. And so undeserving, in fact, are some of those who have 
actually received the " Honour," that its refusal to any becomes 
thereafter an act of arbitrary injustice. 

All this evinces the necessity of a radical change in the mode of 
examination, if our degree in Arts should ever rise to value, as a 
testimony even of the lowest proficiency. The plan proposed by 
the Visitors would certainly be a marvellous improvement. But 
I am doubtful (in the circumstances) as to the expediency of 
excluding the Professors from all share in the examination ; 
though I have no doubt that the judgment of passing or rejecting 
and of classifying candidates, should be confided solely to a disin- 
terested body, who ought likewise to be, at least, joint examiners 
with the Professors. Many, however, of the worst evils of the 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 629 

present system of graduation would be alleviated, were the can- 
didates, even apart from the introduction of such a body : — 1°, 
previously tried by an extra-academical board, as to their mere 
fitness to be taken on the academical examination ; 2°, if this 
examination were made public, and consequently, in part at least, 
oral ; 3°, if the subjects were fixed, and an adequate preparation 
in certain books or classes of books made sufficient to qualify for 
every honour ; 4°, if candidates were allowed to give up for 
examination as many books as they could accurately master, and 
were classified in each department according to their proficiency ; 
and 5°, if every professor, perhaps certain others, were not only 
declared entitled but invited to put questions orally in any branch. 
— This plan would at least redeem the degree in Arts from its pre- 
sent merited contempt ; it would make it a certificate of some 
significance, rendering the examination also a stimulus to study, 
and an occasion for the manifestation of ability. 

A Degree in Arts is a luxury, and its abuse is of comparatively 
little consequence either to the individual or to the public ; a 
Degree in Medicine is a necessity, and its right regulation is of 
the highest importance, both to the worthy graduate's success, 
and to the general welfare. To this therefore I now go on. 

The University of Edinburgh, in its medical department, had 
been latterly in a gradual process of decline ; and the question 
which the Visitors had first and principally to determine was, — 
Whether the Medical Doctorate was to be still farther eviscerated 
of all literary qualification, and yet the degree, issued under the 
same name, to be still entitled to its former privileges ? Were 
this to be allowed, intending practitioners would be tempted by a 
more valuable license, at a rate as low as any surgeon's or apothe- 
cary's company could afford. No doubt, the public would thus 
get only, under a higher name, an inferior order of practitioners, 
and be wholly deprived of its old accomplished physician ; while 
the inferior examining boards would be injured, the medical pro- 
fession in general degraded, and the University at large discre- 
dited, — only, a portion of its members reaping, for a time, a per- 
sonal advantage from the calamitous change. — But to be some- 
what more particular. 

Universities in general, and the University of Edinburgh in 
particular, were privileged by the State to grant, upon certain 
conditions, a certain kind of liberty to practice Medicine. They 
were privileged to examine, and to authorise candidates for the 



630 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

highest branch of the profession, that is as Physicians, but were 
not privileged to grant licenses for the lower departments, that is 
as Surgeons and Apothecaries. If, therefore, an University 
attempt this, it attempts what it has no right to perform ; while, 
at the same time, by the attempt itself, it not only derogates from 
its own dignity, but commits an act of injustice upon other corpo- 
rations, by usurping their peculiar privileges. But worse than 
this : The University of Edinburgh not only usurps what does 
not belong to it ; it does not satisfactorily discharge the function 
of those bodies on whose province it encroaches. It is not merely 
superfluous. For, in the first place, it does not execute the duty 
of examination by those who have no interest in licensing inca- 
pables, but by those who have. In the second place, it dispenses 
with those branches of liberal education which it was bound to 
insure that all its graduates possessed ; nay, it even dispenses with 
these, to an extent which would be held disgraceful by the inferior 
incorporations which it supersedes. For example : a smaller 
amount and an inferior quality of liberal learning is, in Scotland, 
required to qualify for the highest honours and privileges of the 
profession, than even in Ireland is deemed necessary for the very 
lowest ; so that the medical aspirant who finds himself, from want 
of Greek, unable to rise into a Dublin Apothecary, is obliged to 
subside into an Edinburgh Physician. (Ev. I. 218, 219.) In like 
manner, the classical acquirements of an Edinburgh Doctor of 
Medicine (which are wisely not taken upon trust,) would not 
enable him to pass before the Military, to say nothing of the 
Naval, Medical Board (Ev. I. 458, 534, 535, 339); as these 
Boards, for either service, like the Prussian Government for all 
its lieges, justly place no confidence in academical certificates, but 
examine doctors and no-doctors, indifferently. Thus, from want 
of an academical controlling power, acting for the public and Uni- 
versity, the public is, as said, deprived of that class of approved 
medical practitioners, to secure which exclusively, this and other 
Universities were relatively privileged ; w T hilst our Alma Mater, 
degraded by her members, selling, for their private interest, her 
highest medical honours, at a lower literary price than is exacted, 
not only by other academical bodies, but even by the inferior 
licensing incorporations, is, in fact, constrained by her own officers 
to convert her " Seminary of Science " into an " Asylum of Igno- 
rance," covering the country with her annual issues of " graduated 
dances," — of " Doctores indocti." In thus reducing the standard 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 631 

of medical literary competency far below the academical level of 
England, Ireland, or any other country of Christendom, the 
supine or interested regulators of this school have, unfortunately, 
been allowed to accomplish the one natural result. Medicine has 
now ceased in Scotland to be a learned profession ; and though, 
even in Scotland, learned medical men may still be found, there 
is here no longer any assurance, not to say, of superior erudition, 
but any guarantee against the lowest ignorance, afforded to the 
public in a medical degree. 

Against the proceedings in this process of abasement, the 
medical interest predominant in the Senatus, though peculiarly 
unqualified to legislate for a University, was not left without 
warning in the reclamations even of the medical professors. The 
late Nestor of the Faculty, Dr Duncan senior, foresaw nothing in 
the innovations, but " Edinburgh Degrees being conferred upon 
ignorant empirics." (Ev. I. 219.) Professor Sir George Ballin- 
gall thus declares : 

" I cannot see the expediency or propriety of granting the ' highest degree 
in medicine, at such a limited expense of time and means, as will enable the 
holders of such degree to undersell or even to enter into competition with the 
common routiniers of the country. On the contrary, it appears to me that 
it is only by elevating the standard of scientific education in all its branches 
within the Universities, that we can hold out anything distinctive or desir- 
able in a University education, or that we can expect to keep that vantage 
ground which these institutions have hitherto held in public esteem." (Ev. 
I. 268.) 

Enlightened views in regard to the necessity of classical and 
philosophical accomplishment in the medical graduate were like- 
wise held by other distinguished medical professors, as Dr John 
Thomson, Dr James Hamilton, and Mr James Russell, — to say 
nothing of every medical and surgical authority out of the Univer- 
sity. (Ev. I. 455, sq. 307, 308, 310, 312, 288.) But passing to 
the opinion of other members of the Senatus, we find the Faculty 
of Arts in 1824 thus formally reporting : 

" No higher qualifications are expected from the Physician [who practises 
on an academical degree] than from the Surgeon [who does not]. Hence it 
has happened, that the Physician has sunk in the scale of general estimation, 
while the Surgeon has risen to his level. The Faculty can perceive no other 
plan more effectual, none more generally expected by the public, than by 
enlarging the qualifications of the Physician, by obliging him to obtain that 
literary and scientific education which will give grace and dignity to his 



632 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

medical acquitments, and which appears essentially necessary to every one 
obtaining the highest honours an University has to bestow." * (Ev. 1. 144.]) 

What is thought, and justly thought, upon the subject by the 
public, and intelligent English public, appears from the plain 
spoken evidence of an able and well-informed witness, of whom 
the Visitors do not communicate the name. It is well worthy of 
the reader's serious attention ; and the result is, that the Edin- 
burgh medical degree was then regarded in England as nothing 
else (alas !) than a fraud upon the nation. And what, now ? 

u It is argued, — that the demand for the highest rank in Medicine is 
limited, and that to many the possession of it is of no value. Granted. But 
is that a reason for increasing the supply? Is that a reason for sending 
forth Doctors by hundreds every year ? Is it not unreasonable to argue, — 
that because the demand for medical men of the highest rank is limited, the 
University of Edinburgh ought, therefore, to have the privilege of conferring 
that rank, with a facility that multiplies the number beyond the demand, 
and degrades the distinction it is meant to convey ? One would suppose, 
from this line of argument, that Edinburgh College had been so chary of the 
honours it has to bestow, that, small as is the existing demand, it was not 
effectually supplied from Scotland. But the case is precisely the reverse. 
The complaints against the Scotch Universities are — that they supply a 
greater number of Doctors than the wants of society require — that they 
manufacture a baser article than Oxford and Cambridge, affix the same 
stamp to it, and introduce it in such quantities into the market, that the 
whole cargo is depreciated, — and when their coinage happens to be of ster- 
ling worth, that its value is lessened by the plated and Brummagem articles 
that have issued from the same mint. - - - - To what extent the demand 
of higher qualifications for medical honours at Edinburgh College might 
affect the pecuniary interests of its Professors, I am not prepared to say ; 
but I am sure it would raise the value of their Diplomas, and settle beyond 
a doubt the real merit of their School of Medicine. I am far from wishing 
to underrate the Edinburgh Professors ; but I must be permitted to remark, 

* The Faculty, however, annulled all attention to the truth which they thus 
spoke, by requesting that a compulsory attendance on their own classes in a 
University should be the test of the literary competence " indispensable " in 
the medical graduate. They open their petition by saying: — " They feel it 
to be a duty they owe to the University and the public, not to allow the pre- 
sent occasion to pass without endeavouring to render the degree more respec- 
table and more dignified than it has hitherto been ; and now that the Senatus, 
in their boundless liberality, have agreed to accept of certificates of attendance 
on self- constituted teachers, they will not, it is presumed, be less indulgent to 
the radical professors in Universities, who wen 1 originally constituted to lay 
the foundations of general knowledge, and to prepare the youth for all the 
learned and liberal professions," &c M &c. (Ev. T. L42.]) 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 638 

that under their present system of conferring degrees, the number of students 
that flock to them for instruction, is no more a test of the value of their lec- 
tures, than the resort of young couples to Gretna Green is a proof of the 
piety of the Blacksmith who gives them his nuptial benediction. - - - - 
But though some men go to Edinburgh in order to obtain a rank in their 
profession, which they could not otherwise acquire, and to which from the 
deficiencies of their education, and the mediocrity of their attainments, they 
have no right to pretend, the great majority of students go to learn their 
profession ; and where they are well taught, there they will go, whether they 
expect to be decorated with degrees or not. If the Edinburgh Professors do 
their duty, and in comparison with other teachers are duly qualified to afford 
instruction, they may lose graduates, but they will not lose students by the 
change. - - - - On the supposition that a higher and better educated 
class of medical practitioners is wanted, to a certain but to a limited extent, 
we are asked, — How is that class to be supplied? What sort of education 
is to be required from those who aspire to it ? Ought there to be a different 
standard in Scotland from that which is used in England ; ought, in short, 
the Scotch Professors to be suffered, at their discretion, to enrol natives of 
Lilliput and Brobdignag in the same regiment, and send them with certifi- 
cates to London, testifying that they are of the same size, and qualified to 
serve in the same company?" — (Ev. I. 145.]) 

And Edinburgh complains, that her QoquxoI are not admitted 
among the x*tfiwes of the London College ! — But we have been 
delayed too long from the opinion of the Visitors themselves. 

" On the subject of the Preliminary Education which should be required 
of candidates for Degrees in Medicine, we have had much deliberation, and 
received a great deal of evidence. It has appeared to us to be a matter of 
great importance, that the persons who are to practise Medicine should be 
men of enlightened minds, accustomed to exercise their intellectual powers, 
and familiar with habits of accurate observation and cautious reflection ; and 
that they should be possessed of such a degree of literary acquirement as 
may secure the respect of those with whom they are to associate in the exer- 
cise of their profession. We therefore thought it an indispensable qualifica- 
tion for a Medical Degree that the individual should have some reasonable 
acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages, and with Mathematics and 
Philosophy ; and though strong doubts have been expressed by many of the 
Medical Professors as to the expediency of rendering this an essential condi- 
tion, from an apprehension that it might prevent many persons from taking 
the benefit of the instruction in Medical Science to be obtained in the Uni- 
versities, we have found our opinion on this point confirmed by every one of 
the eminent Physicians and Surgeons, not belonging to the Universities, 
whom we examined, as well as by some of the Medical Professors them- 
selves ; while we have also been fully satisfied, by a due consideration of the 
matter itself, and of the evidence before us, that there is no solid ground for 
the apprehensions entertained." (Gen. Rep. 56.) 

Those of the medical professors interested in the higher num- 
ber and lower quality of degrees were, however, averse from such 



634 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

preliminary discipline ; and the following is the comment by the 
Visitors on the attempted reasoning of these professors. — And 
first as to the inutility, maintained, of liberal learning for a 
physician : — 

" The amount of this would seem to be, that literature is a positive evil 
to a Physician ; that it unfits him for the habits and state of mind which he 
ought to cultivate ; and that it will be an obstacle to his success in practice. 
It is difficult to conceive that the learned Medical Faculty could have 
intended to go so far as this ; but it is plain that there is much fallacy in the 
assertions, for it can scarcely be called reasoning, which they here adduce. 
It is unquestionably true, that if a man were to devote himself, in the man- 
ner stated, to Literature and Science, making these the chief, or almost the 
exclusive objects of his pursuit ; he would not be a good Physician : but this 
is not at all what is intended ; the sole object being, that a Physician should 
have that liberal education which is implied in a course of University attend- 
ance. By acquiring this, the mind would be invigorated for any intellectual 
pursuit, and it could superinduce no habit disqualifying for the activity of 
exertion, or for mingling in society as a medical man must do. Such educa- 
tion also, it is to be remembered, would be completed, or nearly so, before 
medical pursuits commenced, certainly long before practice was attempted, 
and would not therefore have the effect which is here supposed." (Rep. Ed. 
187.) 

Next, as to the effect, argued by the Medical Faculty, that an 
elevation in the standard of Doctoral competency would be fol- 
lowed by a reduction in the number of Doctors. On this the 
Visitors remark : — 

"It is thus represented, that because, which is undoubtedly true, there 
are men who practise with little or no literary attainment, the general tone 
of the profession should be lowered, or at least that no attempt should be 
made to elevate it, because the expense being thus increased, the number of 
enlightened Graduates would be diminished, and practice would be surren- 
dered, much more than it is, to those of inferior qualifications. But this 
reasoning is far from being conclusive. There is, it is to be lamented, too 
great a disposition in many to prefer quackery to sound Medical Science ; 
and by those who do so, the literature of medical men will not be held in 
much estimation. But as no one would contend that, on this account, 
quackery should be preferred to knowledge, upon the same ground it would 
seem that want of literature should not be preferred to learning. In fact, the 
preparatory education for which some contend, does not interfere in the 
slightest degree with the medical ; it only tends to make the practitioner a 
more enlightened man." (Rep. Ed. 188.) 

For myself, I am however inclined to think, that were the 
Degree in Medicine raised in Edinburgh to its ancient and legiti- 
mate literary eminence, (though the profession might then attract 
many whom it does not now,) the number of Edinburgh graduates 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 635 

would be greatly decreased. But so it ought. The present propor- 
tion is, in truth, not honourable to the University, and useless, nay 
pernicious to the public. The effect, I repeat, is, — to deprive the 
nation of what a University was privileged to secure, — an ascer- 
tained class of liberally educated physicians ; for thus the highest 
degree is reduced to a level with the lowest licence, the only dif- 
ference being, that more has been paid for the higher name, and 
that the larger price has gone into different pockets. By the 
reduction of the physician to an unlearned practitioner, it is not 
Medicine only, as a liberal study, which has suffered ; it is not 
only that the bodies of the lieges have been turned over to the 
murderous confidence of ignorant dogmatics (See above p. 252). 
The learning of its medical profession is a foot in the tripod of a 
country's erudition ; and this foot being broken, the whole tripod, 
that is the whole professional and liberal learning of a country, 
loses a principal support. (See above, p. 333, sq.) 

The Visitors then proceed to adduce, in support of a liberal 
education in the medical graduate, the evidence of the three phy- 
sicians, at the time, of the highest professional reputation in this 
city, — Dr John Thomson, Dr Abercrombie, and Dr Davidson. 
The first two are well known as authors ; I therefore quote only 
the opinion of the last, whom all who knew, admired, not only for 
his rare medical skill, but for his great general talent and most 
varied acquirements. 

u The first point I would remark on is Preliminary Education. The first 
subject that attracted my attention, in reflecting upon the Education of 
Medical Graduates, was that of Preliminary Instruction, for which but very 
slight provision is made in the Statuta Soleunia of this University, an 
acquaintance with Latin being only required ; whilst the means, till lately, 
employed to ascertain the proficiency of the Students, even in that language, 
do not appear to be the best suited for the purpose. I cannot help thinking 
that more extensive literary and scientific education should be required from 
those who mean to take out a Medical Degree, as extensive as can reason- 
ably be expected in young men of seventeen or eighteen, at which age the 
study of Medicine will probably commence. I conceive that the branches of 
Preparatory Education should be Greek, Latin, French, and Mathematics ; 
whilst Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral Philosophy, and Natural History, 
may be acquired, either before beginning the study of Medicine, or may be 
attended to along with the Medical Classes. I presume that, though Natu- 
ral Philosophy, Logic, and Ethics, will probably be studied, either at this 
or some other University, Languages, with Mathematics, may be acquired 
wherever such instruction can be procured ; and that the proficiency of the 
Students in those branches of knowledge may be certified either by Diplo- 
mas, Certificates from respectable Schools or Academies, or by their under- 



636 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A ) 

going an Examination by the Professors of this University. If I were asked 
the reasons for recommending a more extensive Preliminary Education for 
Medical Graduates, I should be puzzled, not from the difficulty of discover- 
ing them, but from the fear of that ridicule which attaches itself to advancing 
arguments in favour of an opinion which is so manifestly correct as to 
require no support. A preliminary Scientific and Literary education appears 
to be the best, if not the only proper preparation of the youthful mind for 
entering upon the study of so extensive and difficult a subject as Medicine, 
where an immediate demand is made for close attention, much discrimination, 
and an acquaintance with many subjects not strictly Medical. Experience 
has convinced me that those Students whose minds have been previously 
cultivated, make the most steady and rapid progress in their new pursuits, 
which are much less difficult to them than to those who are totally unscien- 
tific and deficiently educated. I know, besides, that it is a common subject 
of regret amongst most Physicians, as it is with myself, that they did not 
make use of youth, leisure, and opportunity, in laying a broad and deep 
foundation of general knowledge, on which to rest their Medical acquire- 
ments. I may be permitted to add, that were I not convinced of the neces- 
sity for a liberal education, preliminary to the study of Medicine, I should 
surrender my doubts to the authority of much wiser men, in England, Ire- 
land, France, Germany, and Italy, by whose influence it has been established 
in the Medical Schools of those countries ; nor should I be inclined to sub- 
mit less willingly to the decision of the Faculty of Arts in this College, who 
strongly recommended a preparatory education for the Medical Graduates, 
in a Memorial presented, I believe, to the Senatus Academicus (which I had 
the advantage of perusing). A competent knowledge of Greek appears to 
be requisite for the Medical Students, from the fact that much of the lan- 
guage and terminology of Anatomy, Medicine, Botany, &c, is derived from 
that language, not only from the Greeks having been our earliest masters in 
many of the sciences, but also for the sake of convenience, from such terms 
being short, expressive, and explanatory, and ill supplied by the tedious 
circumlocutions of modern tongues. With these terms, of constant occur- 
rence both in lectures and in books, the uneducated Student cannot fail to 
be puzzled; and he must either content himself with ignorance of their 
import, or bestow much time, and suffer no very agreeable fatigue, in hunt- 
ing out their etymology. Independently of all these reasons, it appears to 
me, at least unseemly, that the members of a learned profession should 
be ignorant of the language in which those wrote who were their original 
instructors, and whose works are still, after the flight of ages, by no means 
unworthy of serious and attentive perusal. It seems, moreover, peculiarly 
unfitting that the Magnates of the Medical Profession (those who have 
acquired either real or imaginary dignity from Degrees, to which some pri- 
vileges belong,) should not possess the standard education of gentlemen, nor 
be able to take that station in society which a cultivated intellect is entitled 
to assume."— (Rep. Ed. 180, Ev. I. 503.) 

The Visitors then go on to say : — 

" There is much other evidence to the same effect ; but it is sufficient to 
point out the leading views upon the subject ; Hi<> particular grounds of 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 637 

opinion it would be impossible, within the limits of this Report, to detail. 
The conclusion to be deduced seems unquestionably to be decidedly in favour 
of a superior Preliminary Education to that which is now required. This 
can be obtained, apparently, without the slightest hardship : the more ele- 
mentary parts of it being procured previously to the commencement of 
medical studies, and the more advanced during the prosecution of those stu- 
dies ; an arrangement which it is in evidence could without difficulty be made. 
It would thus not be essential that there should be the Degree of Master of 
Arts, but merely that there should be an acquaintance with the learned lan- 
guages and other branches of knowledge ; and by combining with the Medi- 
cal Classes what can be acquired only at a University, the residence in 
Edinburgh would not be prolonged. The character of the Medical Profes- 
sion would thus be much raised, and provision made, as has been already 
stated, for spreading throughout the country enlightened and well-informed 
men, who might be instrumental in increasing to a great degree the advan- 
tages to be derived from social intercourse, while they would have access to 
sources of enjoyment peculiarly valuable in the sequestrated situation in 
which many Medical Practitioners must spend the great part of life." — (Rep. 
Ed. 189.) 

To conclude this part of the subject : — 

We have here two diametrically opposite opinions. On the 
one side, against the demand of a liberal accomplishment in the 
physician, we have six out of the seven holders of an academical 
monopoly, a body strongly and exclusively interested in the 
creation of medical graduates, at the lowest qualification, and in 
the greatest number. On the other side, we have the authority 
of all Universities out of Scotland, and of the ivhole disinterested 
intelligence, in this and every other country, professional and non- 
professional, intra and extra-academical. The Medical Faculty — 
the monopolising body — of this University, spoke, I doubt not, 
only as it thought. But as the opinions of men in general, are, 
in general, only a reflex of their interests ; so it is difficult even 
for a mind, however vigorous and independent, to resist the mag- 
netic influence, as it were, of the ordinary minds with which it 
acts in consort : and thus is to be explained, the otherwise inex- 
plicable fact, that men of high intelligence and the most upright 
intentions are so often found engaged in the championship of mea- 
sures, whicli, had they acted of and from themselves, they would 
intellectually and morally contemn. In fact, from individual mem- 
bers of the Medical Faculty, and their personal accomplishments, 
might be drawn a signal manifestation of the fallacy of its con- 
junct Report. But this is needless. As Hobbes has well observed : 
— Were it for the profit of a governing body, that the three 
angles of a triangle should not be equal to two right angles, the 



638 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

doctrine that they were, would, by that body, inevitably be 
denounced, as false and pernicious. The best, certainly the most 
curious, examples of this truth, are, indeed, to be found in the 
History of Medicine, — and of medicine, too, when yet a learned 
and philosophical profession. For this, on the one hand, is 
nothing else than a marvellous History of Variations : and, on the 
other, only a still more marvellous history of how every suc- 
cessive variation has, by medical bodies, been first furiously 
denounced, and (though always laughed at by the wiser wits) 
then bigotedly adopted. Homoeopathy and the Water Cure are, 
now and here, blindly anathematised as heretical ; in the next 
generation, it is not improbable, that these same doctrines may be 
no less blindly preached, as exclusively orthodox. — Such is poor 
human nature ! Such is corporate, such is medical authority ! 

The next point is the Examination for medical degrees. On 
this the Visitors thus report : — 

" The Examination for Degrees in Medicine have hitherto been conducted 
by the Members of the Medical Faculty, exclusive of the Professors of the 
Medical Classes recently instituted by the Crown, and each Candidate lias 
been required to pay a sum of Ten Guineas, which is divided equally among 
the Examining Professors. 

" We are of opinion that this system is liable to very serious objections. 
The emoluments of the Professors who examine ought not to depend on the 
number of Candidates for Degrees. At present the fees drawn by the several 
Professors from this source are very considerable, in consequence of the great 
number of Candidates ; and it appears from the evidence that the number of 
Degrees conferred has been continually increasing during many years, in a 
proportion much greater than corresponds to the rate of increase in the num- 
ber of Students attending the Medical School of Edinburgh. 

" No explanation has been given of this extraordinary increase in the 
number of Degrees, and we are satisfied that it cannot be accounted for from 
any external causes. We are of opinion that the present system has a neces- 
sary tendency to render the Examinations less strict than they might other- 
wise be, and practically to lower the standard of qualifications in the estima- 
tion of the Faculty. It is, besides, scarcely to be doubted, that there must 
be a natural reluctance in Professors to reject Candidates, to many of whom 
the fees paid to the Examiners may be a very serious sacrifice. Although 
most of the Professors in the Medical Faculty entertain opinions adverse to 
any extension of the subjects of examination, and are strongly impr 
with the idea that the importance and value of the University as a School of 
Medicine ought to be estimated by the number of the Degrees annually con- 
ferred, an entirely different opinion has been strongly expressed by (ill the 
other Physicians and Surgeons whom we have examined, being persons very 
extensively engaged in the practice o\' their profession. It should seem to 
us. that the value of the Degree must bear a proportion to the nature of the 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 639 

qualifications required for it ; and we have already observed, that it does 
not appear to us, that either the reputation of the University as a School of 
Medicine, or the number of Students resorting to it for instruction, will be 
regulated merely by the number of those who may obtain Degrees. It has 
never been found, in regard to objects of such importance in professional 
pursuits, that the risk of failure has tended in any degree to diminish the 
number of those endeavouring to qualify themselves for attaining them." — 
(Gen. Rep. 64.) 

What is here said by the Visitors is most true. 

As to their first observation : — Nothing can be more inconsistent 
with every principle of academical policy than to make it the 
private interest of an examiner to be remiss or perverse in the 
performance of his public duty. But this is here done, and done, 
among others, in three ways. For, in the circumstances of the 
Edinburgh medical examinations : it is, 1°, made directly the 
interest of the examiner, to pass as many, to reject as few candi- 
dates, as possible ; 2°, it is made indirectly his interest, to allow 
extra attendance on his class to compensate for deficiency in the 
examination;* and 3 e , he is enabled to exercise with impunity, 
his favour or disfavour in the passing or rejection of any candi- 
date. — Theoretically, this examination is thus utterly vicious ; 
neither is theory here contradicted by experience, f 

Nor is their second observation less correct. As to the large- 
ness of the relative number of Medical Degrees granted by the 
University of Edinburgh : — this, so far from being, in my opinion, 
matter of honour and satisfaction, should, in the circumstances, 
cause only humiliation and regret. For it exhibits nothing but 
decline ; — decline in the number of medical students, — decline in 
the requirements of examination, — decline in the qualification of 
the candidates. Comparing the first decade of the present half 
century w r ith the last : — we find the medical students in the former 
nearly doubling in number those in the latter ; whereas the medi- 

* It is well known, that the power of medical examination secures attend- 
ance on the class of the examiner, even though such attendance be not 
required for a Degree. Hence the anxiety to be admitted a medical 
examiner in this University, howbeit without a participation in the direct 
emoluments of the labour. 

f The late Professor Leslie, in his evidence taken by the Visitors, and 
speaking of the medical department of the University of Edinburgh, says : — 
" It is too severe a trial on human nature to have one's duty set in direct 
opposition to his interests. No real reform in the curriculum can ever be 
effected but by the application of extrinsic and paramount authority." — 
(Ev. I. 155.) * 



640 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

cal degrees are, in proportion to the students, nearly thrice as 
numerous, being, in the former, somewhat less than one to fifteen, 
in the latter, somewhat less than one to five. And this too, though 
in the former, only a three years medical study in any University 
was required ; whilst in the latter, such a study during four years, 
and one at least in the University of Edinburgh, became neces- 
sary. Now what does this evince ? — Firstly, That the University 
is trading on its former credit, a trade which if suffered to con- 
tinue must end in a bankruptcy of that credit itself. For, 
secondly, its degrees are now granted to an inferior and more 
numerous order of students ; which, thirdly, appears, because 
the proportional increase has taken place along with, and in 
consequence of, a diminution in the requirement of literary and 
liberal qualification in the examinee ; whilst, fourthly, it is mani- 
fest, that students now resort to this medical school, chiefly for 
the sake of its facile and unlettered Doctorate, for, as four years 
of medical lectures in a university are here necessary for the 
degree, the whole number of medical pupils in attendance on this 
University is little more than four times the number of the gra- 
duates whom it annually turns out. 

It thus appears that the students in medicine are attracted to 
Edinburgh chiefly by the bribe of its degree ; and that at least 
the English candidates are almost exclusively those who are 
either too illiterate to satisfy the liberal requirements even of 
the London University, (for Oxford and Cambridge are here out 
of question), or professionally too incompetent to stand the test of 
the impartial examination there organised. When the literary 
qualifications for our Scottish medical degrees are raised to a 
level even with the lowest standard of other British Universities. 
and when our Scottish academical examinations are rendered 
unbiassed criteria of professional competency ; then will the num- 
ber of our medical graduates afford an index of the relative emi- 
nence of our medical school ; — but not till then. Should matters 
go on as hitherto ; if, now there be no certainty, so, soon there will 
be no probability, that even the " small Latin and no Greek." 
still nominally required, will be furnished by the medical candi- 
date and exacted by the medical examiner. " 'Tis Latin, and can- 
not be read ;" this which the late Dr Gregory predicted would 
soon be the rule in his profession, is certainly no longer the 
exception : nay, even English grammar and spelling are. by the 
confession of Edinburgh Medical Professors, luxuries, but not 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. Q41 

necessities, for those whom our University proclaims to the world, 
as meriting and having received her " Highest Honours in Medi- 
cine." Latin is now, as Greek was before 1823 ; — it is nominally 
required for an Edinburgh medical degree, and an examination 
as to sufficiency, is left to the Medical Faculty. But in 1826, 
scarcely three years after Greek was dropt from the Edinburgh 
requirements for a physician, we have the highest authority 
in that Faculty declaring, " that not one medical man in five 
hundred reads Greek." And yet only three short years before, 
the Medical Faculty was professedly reading and examining in 
Greek, nay certifying to the sufficiency of all its graduates, in 
the language of Hippocrates, — the language now authoritatively 
declared (what was long known in fact,) to be professionally obso- 
lete. Such, however, is a specimen of free professorial examina- 
tion. Again : in 1825, the necessity of speaking and of under- 
standing spoken Latin was formally taken off both Professor and 
Student ; a candidate's Latinity was left hereafter to be tried by 
the same examiners as was, heretofore, his knowledge of Greek ; 
and now, after the operation not of three but of nearly thirty 
years, — now, after reducing the examination from the level of 
a third, to a level of all the students, how many are there, — 
in five hundred medical graduates of Edinburgh, let us say, — who 
read Latin ? In fact, though not without advantages, in certain 
respects, this measure has left us no security, that either medical 
graduate or medical professor, should henceforward be able to make 
any use of the language of the learned, — the language in which 
nineteen in the score of medical notabilities have been written. 
And from the illiterate and nameless multitude of this fallen and 
falling profession, the courted, canvassed, cajoled, concussed elec- 
tors — the incompetent crowd, (not certainly without its competent 
individuals also,) to whom has been abandoned the patronage of 
this University, are still left (apart from occasional notoriety of 
merit) to nominate, by chance, favour, or intrigue, among others, 
its medical professors ; and these medical professors, now consti- 
tuting the predominant influence in the Senatus Academicus, take 
upon them, and are quietly allowed, to administer, according to 
their lights, the affairs of this intended school of learning, and to 
lavish for their personal interest, and not for the common good, 
trusts fondly confided to the Senatus, when the Senatus was still, 
comparatively, a learned, intelligent, and well-balanced body. 
Indeed, if the law do not avert the evil, the Reid Trust, instead of 

2s 



642 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

a resource towards the great ends of the University, — of the 
teachers not more than of the taught, — seems destined to be 
degraded into a fund for reckless litigation, into a fund for the 
private profit of the trustees, and medical trustees, in particular. 
(See p. 385.) 

The history of Universities — in truth, of all human institutions, 
lay or clerical, proves, by a melancholy experience, that semi- 
naries founded for the common weal, in the furtherance of sound 
knowledge, are, if left to themselves, — if left without an external 
and vigilant, an intelligent and disinterested supervision, regularly 
deflected from the great end for which they were created, and 
perverted to the private advantages of those through whom that 
end, it was confidently hoped, would be best accomplished. And 
this melancholy experience is, though in different forms, almost 
equally afforded in all our older British Universities ; for all of 
these the State has founded and privileged, but over none has it 
ever organized any adequate controlling power. And what is 
the consequence ? What is their condition ? What ought they 
to be, and what are they ? Corrupt all ; — all clamant for reform. 
But unless the reform come from without, we need not, in any 
University, have any expectation of a reform coming from within. 
Left to itself, there is no redemption ; 

" Ipsa sui merces erit, et sine viudice prseda." 

Our only hope, a hope, indeed, long deferred, is a reform from 
without, — from above, — from the Supreme Civil Power. In 
regard to Edinburgh, it would be peculiarly simple to expect a 
correction of the evils prevalent in that University, from the 
bodies — either that in which the corruption has originated, or that 
by which it has been tolerated, or rather, — we should say in 
charity, — not observed. It would, indeed, be positively foolish to 
call to the Senatus Academicus, — the Senatus as now constituted. 
— " Arise! awake V It would be more rational to invoke even 
the Town Council ; but if the State do not interfere, then this 
University must, with others, abide the alternative — " be for ever 
fallen !" Surely, however, the State cannot always issue costly 
Commissions, and yet, never afterwards heed their recommenda- 
tions. In the cases of Oxford and Cambridge, reform may indeed 
be difficult; but in the case of Edinburgh, nothing could be more 
easy. In fact, the most essential improvements are in general 
manifest, and even urged in the Reports of the two Commissions ; 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 04:5 

and these, we may now confidently hope, will not long remain 
neglected, seeing that Government seems seriously engaged on an 
inquiry into the English Universities. 

But I have dwelt too long upon this subject, and shall only 
add : — that the experience of Edinburgh, like the experience of 
every other University in which the same practice has been pur- 
sued, proves, that an examination by professors exclusively, — by 
all the professors of a faculty* — and by professors left to their 
own discretion, and without even the obligation of oath, statute or 
publicity, is utterly worthless, as a criterion of competency in the 
candidate for an academical degree. Without entering on details, 
I would only say in general, that to redeem the Edinburgh medi- 
cal degree, even to respectability, there are required the three 
following conditions : 

1°. An extra-professorial examination, to ascertain whether the 
candidate possess the general literary and scientific knowledge 
necessary for any liberal profession. 

2°. An examination, either wholly extra-professorial, or, at 
least, with extra-professorial judges (who should also be examin- 
ers), to ascertain the professional qualifications of the candidate. 

3°. The examiners and judges : — to be adequate to their func- 
tions ; to act by rule ; publicly, as far as possible ; and, now as 
formerly, here as elsewhere, under the obligation of a solemn 
oath. 

* When limited to a few, responsibility is concentrated ; but when (as 
now in Edinburgh,) the right of examination, and consequently the benefit 
of an indirect compulsion on attendance, is conceded to all the members of 
this Faculty, all become interested in certain measures, responsibility is 
attenuated to a minimum, and the whole body does, what a part of it would 
not be bold enough to attempt. Since the previous sheet was printed, above 
four months ago, I see that the medical examiners have been publicly accused 
of rejecting a candidate, not for incompetence, but on the confessed ground 
that he was supposed favourable to a medical theory, rising dangerously in 
opinion, and not in unison with the medical theory of his examiners. On 
such a step, — such an injustice, — such an absurdity, the old sectional exa- 
miners would not have ventured. If the charge be well founded, an Ediu- 
burgh medical graduate may now be an ignorant, unable to spell his mother 
tongue, but must not be a proficient, professing to think for himself. So cer- 
tain also are now the opinions of a majority touching the very practice, and 
in the very body, where, heretofore, medical scepticism was always in pro- 
portion to medical wisdom ! Our Gregorys and Thomsons — what would they 
now say to this ? See p. 252, note. 



644 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A). 

These are the requisites of mere respectability ; but were the 
candidates impartially and ably classified on a sufficient standard, 
the examination might be raised to a higher value. 

The recommendation now made to introduce other examiners 
for a degree beside the academical lecturers, is no anomaly, is no 
innovation. It is, in fact, a return to principle — to the custom of 
all academical antiquity, a return even to the practice of the 
University of Edinburgh itself, to wit, in its first bestowal of 
medical degrees. Then, the Doctors of the Edinburgh College of 
Physicians were called in ; indeed, the graduation fee which has 
since been left to the " Medical Faculty " of the University, 
belonged to the Library, and was thence taken, to bestow it on 
these extra -academical examiners, in compensation of their non- 
official trouble. — I may add, that had the Town-Council, in their 
recent regulation touching the medical degrees of this University, 
limited the qualifying attendance to the courses given by medical 
graduates, and more especially by Edinburgh medical graduates, 
there could not possibly have been any valid doubt with regard 
to the legal competency of such regulation, which would, in fact, 
have been only a step toward a state of true academical legality. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(B.) THE EXAMINATION AND HONOURS FOR A DEGREE 

IN ARTS, DURING CENTURIES ESTABLISHED IN 

THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN. 

I have previously referred (p. 407) to this Appendix, for a 
statement in regard to the examination for degrees by the Univer- 
sity of Louvain, in its Faculty of Arts ; which, though overlooked 
by all academical historians, is, I think, the best example upon 
record of the true mode of such examination, and, until recent 
times, in fact, the only example in the history of Universities 
worthy of consideration at all. And as I shall have occasion to 
make a reference to this examination, from the Appendix upon 
Oxford, it may be convenient to insert here, what I should other- 
wise have postponed. 

The University of Louvain, long second only to that of Paris 
in the number of its students and the celebrity of its teachers, and 
more comprehensive even than Paris in the subjects taught ; was 
for several centuries famed, especially, for the validity of its cer- 
tificates of competency — for the value of its different degrees. It 
is recorded by Erasmus as a current saying, " that no one can 
graduate in Louvain without knowledge, manners, and age." But 
among its different degrees, a Louvain promotion in Arts was 
decidedly pre-eminent ; because, in this Faculty, the principles of 
academical examination were most fully and purely carried out. 
I am acquainted, I think, with all the principal documents touch- 
ing this illustrious school ; and beside the Priviligia, or collection 
of statutes, &c. (1728,) possess the relative historical works of 
Lipsius (1605,) of Grammaye (1607,) of Vernulaeus (1627 and 
1667,) of Golnitz (1631,) of Valerius Andreas (1636 and 1650,) 
of the Zedlerian Lexicon (1738,) and of Reiffenberg (1829, sq.) 
But strange to say, I have found no articulate account of its 
famous examinations, except in the Academia Lovaniensis of Ver- 
nulaeus ; and from that book, with a short preliminary extract 
from the Fasti of Andreas, I translate the following passages. 



C>46 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

Valerius Andreas. — " Philosophy, from the very com- 
mencement of the University, was wont to be taught, partly in 
private houses, partly in ' the Street' or public School of Arts, 
(where, indeed, the prelections of two chairs in that Faculty, to 
wit Ethics and Rhetoric, are even now publicly delivered,) the 
Masters themselves teaching each his peculiar subject at a fixed 
and separate hour ; until, in the year 1446, by the authority of 
the Faculty, [private tuition was abolished, and] four Houses were 
appropriated to licensed instruction in Philosophy, [some eight 
and twenty other Colleges belonging to it, being left to supply 
board and lodging to the students.] These four Houses are com- 
monly called Pcedagogia, and, from their several insignia, go by 
the names of the Lily, the Falcon, the Castle, the Hog — The 
Languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,) thereafter obtained their 
special Professors in the Trilingual or Buslidian College — The 
chair of Mathematics, (though its subject had been previously 
taught,) was founded in the year 1636."— (Pp. 9, 243, 249.) 

VERNULiEus, L. ii. c. 6. " On Study and Degrees in the 
[Louvain] Faculty of Arts. 

- - - " Let us now speak concerning Study, which in this Faculty 
is twofold. 

"The study of Philosophy is accomplished in two years. For 
there is given nine months to Logic, eight to Physics, four to 
Metaphysics ; whilst the three last months are devoted to Repe- 
titions of the whole course of Philosophy. — [' Account is also 
taken of Moral Philosophy, taught on Sundays and Holidays, by 
the public Professor, in ' the Street ' or School of Arts, and in the 
Psedagogia by domestic Professors.' — (V. Andreas, p. 242.)] 

" The exercises of this philosophical study take place in four 
Gymnasia, called Pcedagogia. In each of these there are four 

daily prelections, two before, two after, noon ; and each 

House has four Professors of Philosophy, two of whom are called 
Primaries, two Secondaries. These Professors divide among them 
the whole course of Philosophy. And first, in Logic : The Pri- 
maries expound the Introduction of Porphyry, Aristotle's Cate- 
gories, and his books of Prior and Posterior Analytics ; whilst the 
Secondaries, after an explanation of the Elements of Logic, lecture 
upon Aristotle's books of Enouncement, Topics, and Sophisms. 
In Physics and Metaphysics* [I omit the enumeration of books,] 

Compare Valerius Andreas, pp. 242, 248. 



EXAMINATIONS IN LOUVAIN. 647 

the Primaries teach at the hours of six and ten of the morning ; 
the Secondaries at two and four of the afternoon ; and the hearers 
for one hour take down the dictates* of their instructor, whilst for 
another they are examined and required to give an account of the 
prelection which they have again, in the interval, considered. 

" The exercises of Disputation are either private or public. 

" The private are conducted in the several Psedagogia, and in 
kind are twofold. — In the first place, the students, at certain fixed 
hours, contend with each other, on proposed questions, note each 
other's errors, and submit them to the judgment of the Professor ; 
and he, thereafter, assigns place and rank to the more learned. — 
Besides these, on each Monday and Friday, there are Disputations 
held on points of Logic and Physics, over which one of the Pro- 
fessors in rotation presides. These commence in January and end 
in June. 

" The public Disputations take place in the common School of 
Arts, which is called ' The Street ; ' and these also are of two 
kinds. — In the first place, on Mondays and Fridays, during Lent, 
the Physical auditors of all the Gymnasia, divided into certain 
classes, compete among themselves for glory ; one prescribing to 
another the matter of disputation. — Besides these, there are eight 
other Disputations, carried through on Sundays, and which com- 
mence in January. There are present all the Physical hearers 
with their Professors, and in these they severally make answer 
during an hour on certain predetermined theses ; and are oppugned 
by the Prior Bachelor, (that is, by him who has been chosen from 
the more learned,) and thereafter by others. 

" The Honours or Degrees which are obtained in this Faculty 
are those of Bachelor, Licentiate, Master, Previous to these there 
is one public act, that of Determination, as it is called. Therein 
the students of Logic, in a public meeting of the whole Univer- 
sity, severally state their opinion on some Ethical question pro- 
posed by the Preses, who is one of the Professors. In this manner 
* they profess themselves Students of Philosophy, but obtain no 
Degree. 

" The Baccalaureate is here twofold. The one is obtained on 

* The Faculty had not sprinted cursus on these departments, as on Logic. 
The Commentaries by the Masters of Louvain on the books of the Organon, 
are among the best extant. But the objects of study in all the Pasdagogia 
were uniform; and all the pupils could be equally examined, &c, against 
each other in the general concourse of the University. 



648 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

examination after a three months study of Physics ; the other, 
after the completion of the course of Metaphysics, and a public 
responsion touching Philosophy in general. 

" For the Licence, the candidates of all the Gymnasia are pre- 
sented in a body to the Venerable Faculty of Arts ; and on that 
occasion, and in their presence, their future Examiners (that is the 
[eight] Primary Professors of all the Gymnasia, nominated by the 
gymnasiarchs,) make solemn oath, that they will be influenced by 
no private favour, but rank each candidate in the strict order of 
merit. — The examination then begins. This is twofold ; the one 
is called the Trial, the other the Examination [proper.] For 
each, the whole body of candidates is divided into three Classes. 
The First Class consists of twelve, to wit, three from each of the 
gymnasia, students namely, who by the judgment of the Professors 
stand highest in learning. The Second Class, in like manner, 
comprehends twelve, the three, to wit, who from the four gym- 
nasia are named as nearest in proficiency to the first. To them 
[of the second class,] are added twelve others, called Aspirants. 
The Third Class is composed of all the rest. Those who are of 
the First Class are [each] examined for about three hours on all 
the branches of Philosophy ; those who are of the Second, for two 
hours ; those who are of the Third, for half an hour ; and this, 
both in what is called the Trial, and in the Examination proper. 
The several examiners write down the answers of all the candi- 
dates, read them over again at home, and determine [what in their 
several opinions should be] the order of all and each, and write 
out the list. The Examination finished, the examiners, on a day 
appointed, consign their lists of arrangement to the Dean, who 
delivers them to the Gymnasiarchs. They consult among them- 
selves, and, by an ingenious device, calculate the suffrages of 
arrangement, and appoint to each candidate his true and unques- 
tionable rank. 

" When, however, the First or highest {Primus) is proclaimed, 
the bell is tolled in his gymnasium, for three days and nights, and 
holiday celebrated. I pass over the other signs of public rejoicing. 
This honour is valued at the highest, and he who obtains it is an 
object of universal observation. On the third day thereafter, in 
the public School of Arts, the candidates are, in this fashion, pro- 
claimed Licentiates : — In the first place, the Dean of the Venerable 
Faculty, after a public oration, presents the candidates to the 
Chancellor, [who on this occasion ranks superior to the Rector.] 



EXAMINATIONS IN LOUVAIN. G49 

He (the Chancellor) then, having propounded a question, orders 
the Primus to afford, in the answer, a specimen of his erudition, 
he himself acting as opponent. The names of all the others are 
then proclaimed by the Beadle, in the order established by the 
Gymnasiarchs, on the votes of the examining Professors." 

L. ii. c. 8. On the celebrity of the [Louvain] Faculty 

of Arts. " Nearly two hundred candidates annually merit 

the Laurel of Arts ; what other University confers so many ? The 
emulation prevalent between all the [_Houses,~] Masters, and Stu- 
dents of this Faculty, and which though intense is void of envy, 
for in study discord is concordant ; — this emulation braces both 
the diligence of the teachers, and the application of the taught. 
And while they who stand first in the classification, merit and 
receive especial honour, while they who stand last, are almost 
equally disgraced ; * the issue is, that no labour is spared either 
by the Professors in teaching, or by the Pupils in learning. The 
ambition of all is here honourable and hard-working." 

The result of this excellent scheme of examination is, — that a 
degree, taken in the University of Louvain, was always accounted 
respectable, and, if connected with a high place upon the list, 
superior to any other throughout Christendom. And this too 
when the relative eminence of its Professors had, from a vicious 
patronage, (partly in the hands of the Academical, partly in the 

* It does not appear that there were in Louvain any, at least any ade- 
quate, rejections. — Universities, which have not lavished their degrees on 
mere standing, or mere professorial attendance, (to say nothing of inferior 
considerations,) have endeavoured to make their examinations respectable, 
in three ways : which ways also admit of junction ; for any two of them may 
be combined, whilst the whole three may also be united. These are, 1°. 
Rejection of incompetent candidates, by relation to some minimum of know- 
ledge; 2°. Classification of candidates, by their proficiency in relation to 
certain amounts of knowledge ; 3°. Subordination of candidates determined 
merely by their inferiority in knowledge, relatively to each other. The Edin- 
burgh medical degrees, as they formerly were given, may stand as an example 
of the first ; the Louvain and quondam (?) Cambridge degrees in Arts, (had 
Cambridge published and arranged its Polloi,) may afford instances of the 
second added to the third ; while those of Oxford, for nearly half a century, 
may supply the specimen of a combination of the first and second. — A union 
of the whole three is the condition of a perfect examination. The condition 
I say ; for, besides that condition, there are further requisites of such perfec- 
tion ; as the competence of examiners, their obligation to impartiality esta- 
blished upon oath, the publicity of the examination, and the adequate 
appointment of its subjects. 



650 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

hands of the Municipal, body,) declined beneath the level, more 
especially, of the Dutch and Italian Universities. For these Uni- 
versities, while sedulous and successful in filling their Chairs with 
the most illustrious teachers, were always unfortunately remiss in 
the bestowal of their academical honours.* 

* In the scattered biographies of the distinguished alumni of Louvaiu, I 
find it almost uniformly recorded, what was then rank in the graduation list 
of Arts. Of these I chance to have noted a few, which I may give in chro- 
nological order. — In 1478, Pope Hadrian VI. is Primus ; in 1504, M. Dorpius 
is 5th ; in 1507, K. Tapperus is 2d ; in 1522, H. Triverius is Primus ; in 
1527, F. Sonnius is Primus ; in 1529, C. Jansenius is Primus ; in 1542, H. 
Elenus is Primus ; in 1556, H. Cuyckius is Primus, and H. Gravius is 5th ; 
in 1558, J. Molanus is 6th ; in 1561, M. Hovius the canonist is only 46th, 
and G. Estius, the great theologian, 7th ; in 1572, however, the greater L. 
Lessius is Primus ; in 1575, P. Lombardus, Archbishop of Armagh, is Primus; 
in 1599, Du Trieu the logician is Primus ; in 1604, C. Jansenius (from 
whom the Jansenists) is Primus ; in 1606, the philosopher Fromondus is 
3d, &c. &c. &c. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(C.) ON A REFORM OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, WITH 

ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD ; AND LIMITED 

TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS. 

Any project for the reform of old and wealthy schools, like the 
great English Universities, is beset with difficulties, if practical 
possibility is to be combined with theoretical (not to say perfec- 
tion, but) improvement. It is comparatively easy to devise the 
scheme of a faultless University, if we are allowed to abstract 
from circumstances. It is easy, even, to discover and to expose 
defects. Nor is it difficult to trace, — how an ancient institution 
may gradually degenerate, — how certain private interests may 
succeed in gaining a preponderance over the common good,— 
how these interests, if left unchecked, may introduce, foster, and 
defend the most calamitous abuses, — until, at length, the semi- 
nary may be, de facto, the punctual converse of itself, de jure. 
And such, in truth, is the condition of the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge ; for no greater contrast can, even be conceived, 
than are exhibited by these venerable schools, in what they actu- 
ally are, and in what they profess, and, as controlled by statute, 
must profess themselves to be. In two of the preceding articles, 
(pp. 386-463.) I have endeavoured to signalise and to explain, 
how these Universities, as seminaries of education, present an 
almost diametrical opposition between their actual and their legal 
existence. By statute, they are organised as schools of Theology, 
Law, Medicine, and (as a preliminary of all liberal professions) 
of the liberal Arts ; but, in fact, the only instruction which they 
now afford, is in the lowest department of this last faculty alone. 
Intra-academical study is now illegally commuted with extra- 
academical standing. Degrees, — privileged certificates of com- 
petency, — evacuated of all truth, are now lavished without the 
legal conditions of university instruction and university examina- 
tion. In short, the public incorporation and its public instruction 
are now illegally extinguished ; illegally superseded, but not rea- 
sonably supplied by the private Houses and their private tuition. 



652 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

In fine, the statutes of the institution are now only performed 
through a system of perjury, disgraceful to the school, disgrace- 
ful to the country, and as pervasive in these Universities, as it is, 
fortunately, elsewhere unexampled. 

So much I have alleged, because so much, I am convinced, is 
true. But I would not assert, that what has been irregularly 
abolished, is all deserving of restoration, nor, that what has irre- 
gularly sprung up, is all deserving of abolition. On the contrary, 
the very fact, that a state of right could have been so totally, and 
yet so quietly, reversed, affords a presumption that what was 
passively abrogated, was itself but feeble ; and though, with pro- 
per fostering, the feeble might have ultimately waxed strong, still 
it would be a rash conclusion, that in the old and legal there was 
nothing but good, in the new and intrusive nothing but evil. At 
present, waiving all discussion in regard to the professional Facul- 
ties, and limiting our consideration to the school of liberal, or 
general education — to the fundamental Faculty of Arts alone ; it 
will more than suffice for what we can at present even perfunc- 
torily accomplish, to inquire : — How do the English Universities, 
how, in particular, does Oxford, the principal of these, execute 
its one greatest, nay, now, its one only educational function, — 
cultivate, in general, the mental faculties, prepare its alumni for 
any liberal pursuit in life, by concentrating their awakened efforts, 
in studies (objectively) the most important, and (subjectively) the 
most improving ? 

In attempting an answer to this question, it is requisite to fol- 
low out a certain order. For, it is evident, that before proceeding 
to consider what ought to be, we should have previously ascer- 
tained what is, accomplished. I shall, accordingly, inquire and 
endeavour to determine, — first of all, what Oxford, as an instru- 
ment of education, does actually perform, — Oxford as it is; and 
thereafter, how, in consistency with its institutions, it may, in this 
respect, be improved, — Oxford as it might be. 

I. Oxford as it is. — It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, 
to determine, with' sufficient accuracy, the general efficiency of 
Oxford, as compared with any other University. But Oxford, as 
it now exists, is not a single educational organ. It is a congeries 
of such organs ; each of its twenty -four private Houses consti- 
tuting one ; and, at the same time, the public University, in its 
Examination for the primary degree, affords an irrecusable 
standard by which wo may very accurately measure the relative 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 653 

efficiency of these several organs. If, therefore, we find, that 
these, compared among themselves, afford, in the Examination, 
for a series of years, very different and still very uniform results ; 
we shall be entitled to infer, that one House is comparatively a 
good, another comparatively a bad, instrument of education ; — be 
warranted to determine, even on an Oxford standard, what every 
Oxford House does, may, and should accomplish ; — be enabled, in 
fine, to generalise the circumstances, by which such accomplish- 
ment is there furthered or impeded ; — and, consequently, to judge 
what are the most feasible measures, for the reform and improve- 
ment of this University. The same comparison, with the same 
results, may also, it is evident, be instituted between the efficiency 
of the same House at one period, and its efficiency at another. 

Taking, therefore, as the standard of academical proficiency 
the public Examination in its two Departments, and its four 
Classes of Honour ; I proceed to apply this to the several Houses. 
And (as shewn in the following Table) in two different ways : the 
one giving the comparative eminence of those educated in each 
House, (there I.) ; the other, the comparative eminence of those 
who in each House act as educators, (there II.) 

In reference to the Instructed : The Table shews of each House 
the number of its undergraduates (a) ; then the absolute number 
of the honours obtained by them in each department and in every 
class (b, c) ; then the absolute number of Double Firsts (d) ; lastly, 
the number of First Class Honours in either department in pro- 
portion to the number of competitors (g, h) ; but previously, by 
the same relation, the classes of each department valued from 
lowest to highest, as 1, 2, 3, 4 (e, f). On this proportion in L. H., 
proceeding only to the first decimal, I have arranged the Houses ; 
when equal in L. H., their difference in D. M. has then deter- 
mined the order. I have taken, as a sufficient period, the ten 
years ending with 1847 ; (the Calendar of 1848 being the only 
one within my reach when the Table was abstracted ;) and I was 
compelled (for the same reason) to make the number of under- 
graduates of the last year stand for an average of the whole 
ten. 

In reference to the Instructors : The Table shews, in each 
House : first, absolutely, the amount and quality of the Academi- 
cal Honours belonging to its several educators, whether Tutors 
or Readers (i, k) ; and secondly, the Highest Honours, in either 
department, in proportion to the number of these educators (1, m). — 



( 654 ) 



T A B L E ; 

Shewing the comparative efficiency of the Oxford Houses, as 
Seminaries of Education. 



Houses 

arranged 

according to j - v 

their propor- ! W 

tion ot valued j 

graduation 
Honours, pri- 
marily in 
Literse Hu- 
maniores ; 

by (e.) 

From 1838 to 

1847. 



Num- 
ber in 
1847. 



Balliol 

Merton 

Corpus 

Lincoln 

University 

Wadham... 

Magdalen 

St John's... 

Christ Ch. 

Exeter 

New Col- 
lege 

Brazenose 

Queen's 

Oriel 

Trinity 

Worcester 

St Mary's 
Hall 

Jesus 

Magdalen 
Hall 

Pembroke 

New Inn 
Hall 

St Alban's 
Hall 

St Edmund 
Hall 

All Souls... 



84 
38 
24 
56 
63 
87 
27 
66 
186 
134 

20 
95 
74 
82 
83 
94 

33 
57 

85 

72 

28 
8 

32 

4 



I. The Instructed.— Undergraduates, (from 1838 to 1847,) their 



1532 



Honours absolutely. 



(b) 
Literte Hum. 



Classes. 



(c) ! (d) 

Disc. Math. 



Classes. 



U. Ml. IV. 



211 22 30 
10 



14 12 

6 2 



13 15 12 

13 16 11 

17j 29; 22 

8 9 8 

9 111 15 

30 35 35| Silll 9 

16 32 251 5i 41 4 



1. M. Ml. IV. 



7... 2... 
18 5 4 3 
20j 2; 2 2 
15! 2 2... 
13 3 3 2 
12. 1 1 1 

J , 

11 I 



19... 



104 220 285 314 45(53 41106 



Double 
Firsts. 



2 

13 
2 
2 

16 

9 

1 
10 

s 

4 
5 
4 

5 

2i 



10 



Honours in proportion to their numbers. 



Classes valued** 
and added. 



First Classes. 



Hum. 



(?) 

Math. 



« (g) 
Hum. 



0-4 
0-4 
0-4 
0-5 
0-6 
0-6 
06 
0-7 
0-8 
0-8 

0-8 
0-9 
0-9 
0-9 
1-0 
10 



6 



1-2 
1-6 
1-7 
31 
1-6 
2-0 
5-4 
1-9 
2-4 
2-7 

2-9 
20 
3-2 
4-6 



4-7 
9-5 



5 

13 

4 

6 

8 

22 

13 

9 

27 

22 

20 
47 
27 
15 
9 
12 



1 :20 

1:27 

1 :3-6 
1:4-0 



1:140 

1:4-0 

0:8 

1:110 
: 4 



1 :33 
0:57 



1 : 72 

1 :28 

0: 8 

0: 32 
0: 4 



Math. 



14 

9 

12 

56 
16 

87 



: 27 

1 : 22 
1 ': 62 
1 :27 

: 20 

1 : 19 

1 :37 
1 -.41 
1 : 28 
1 :94 

0:33 

1 : 57 

: 85 

1 : 72 

1 :2S 
0: 8 

:32 

0: 4 



* Mathematical Reader. f Latin R. J Greek R. || Rhetoric R. § Logic 

and Philosophy R. 1 Divinity R. ** Class,— First -= 4, Second = 3, Third 

Fourth = 1. 





Shewing 


the 


( 655 ) 

TABLE — Continued ; 

comparative efficiency of the Oxford Houses, as 
Seminaries of Education. 




II. The Instructors ; (as in 1847,) their 


Numbers, Kinds and Honours. 


Numbers in proportion to their First Class Honours. 


(i) 
Tutors (also Readers.) 


(k) 
Readers (only.) 


(1) 
Literse Humaniores. 


(m) 
Disciplinse Mathematicse. 


1 | 2 I 

H. M. H. M. 


3 4 

H. M. H. M. 


1 

H. M. 


2 

H. M. 


3 

a. m. 


Teachers 
in gen. 


Tutors. 


Readers. 


Teachers 
in gen. 1 


Tutors. ! Readers. 


1—0 

: [i-3ft 

i 2— Of 

1—0 
I 1-0 

| 2—2 

1 3—0 

2—2 

0—0 

1—0 

I: 

i! 1 -°t 
1-1 

2—0 
1 3—0 

I 1 —° 

1 2—1 

1—2 

1-0 

1 


1—0 
1—0 

l-ot 

2— OJ 

2—0 

2—3 

2—1* 

2—0 

1—0 

1—0 

9 9 

2—01 

3-0 

1—0 

1—2 

2—1 

1-0 J 

2—0 


1—0 

1—0 
1—2 
1—1 

1—3 

1—2 
1—0 
2—0 
2—1 
1-1§ 

3—0 
3-1* 


1-0 


1— 21T 
2-1* 

1— \* 

2-21 
?-?1T 

0—1* 

0-011 

4-i n 

2-1* 

2-0|| 
0-3f 

3-41 


1-1 *§ 

2-ltt 

0—0* 

3-0f 


4—0 1| 
... 


5 : 5 
3 :2 
3 : 2 

3 :2 
4:3 
4:0 
2:0 
2:0 
5 : 1 
5:3 

?)3:1 

4 :2 
4 : 1 
3:1 
4: 2 
3:1 

5":'l 

3***1 

1 : 1 


3:3 
2: 2 
3:2 
3:2 
3:2 
2:0 
2:0 
2:0 

2 : 1 
3:3 

?) 3 : 1 

3 : 2 
3 : 1 
3 : 1 
3 :2 
2 : 1 

3*':'l 

3***1 

1 : 1 


2 : 2 
1 :0 

1T1 

2: 

3*':*0 
2:0 

1 ":0 
1 :0 

i7o 

1 :0 
2"'0 


5 : 1 
3 :1 
3:0 

3 :0 

4 :2 

4 : 1 
2 : 1 

2 :0 

5 : 1 
5:0 

?)3:0 
4 : 1 
4: 2 

3 : 1 
4: 1 
3 : 1 

5:1 

3***1 

1 : 


3 :0 
2:0 
3:0 
3:0 
3 : 1 
2 :0 
2 : 1 
2:0 

2 :0 
3:0 

2)3:0 

3 :0 
3 :1 
3 : 1 
3 : 1 
2 : 1 

3:1 

3*:'l 

1 :0 


2 : 1 

1 1] 

l":'l 

2 :1 

3:1 

2 :0 

i7i 

1 : 1 

1T0 

1 : 
2***0 


66 : 29 49 : 26 


17:3 


66 : 15 


49 : 8 


17:7 


n i 

membe 


? rom 1 
Until 1 

rs, as 


,he Ca 
ately 1 
candid 


ienda 

s T ew 
ates : 


r of 18L 

College 
or a de 


>1, the 1 
exercis 
gree. 


nstruc 
ed its 


tors ben 
unhapp\ 


ig- accide 
privileg 


ntally nc 
e of exar 


t marke 
nining ai 


d in that 
id passin 


of 1848. 
g its own 



656 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

This latter part of the Table is (for the reason assigned) wholly 
calculated on the year 1847.* 

Looking, then, to the Table, and to its first part ; — we hero 
see, that one House differs marvellously from another in what it 
performs. The esprit de corps is fully as remarkable in Colleges 
as in Regiments ; although individual competency and courage 
must, on the average, be pretty much the same in all. Thus, 
while one Regiment is for generations known as the " fighting," 

another as " the flying, ;" so (what is more intelligible,) in 

one College a first class is merely of commonplace respectability, 
whilst in another it is a kind of secular dignity, and not to be 
plucked, there even confers an enviable distinction. 

Comparing, therefore, the Houses in Literce Humaniores : — In 

* This Table thus affords, (apart from inaccuracies,) not the very truth, 
but only a sufficiently close approximation to it. 

The number of Undergraduates, in the several Houses, ought to have been 
calculated, not on one, but on an average of all the ten years, — The same 
applies to the Instructors. Their average academical eminence, for the 
several Colleges, ought to have been estimated by a comparison of every 
year, and not assumed on the last alone. But as I was unable, as stated, 
when the abstract was made, to accomplish this, the Table must stand as it 
is ; for I have neither time nor patience to reconstruct it. Nor do I think, 
that the result would vary in any point of importance ; for collegial accom- 
modation has been long inadequate; and, at the same time, lodging out 
daring the first four years is not allowed ; whilst the standard of instruction 
in a House does not frequently nor rapidly change. It might, however, be 
interesting, had we Tables of the kind, adequately executed, — say for every 
five years. 

In regard to the valuation of the Classes, on which I have arranged the 
Houses, in their educational eminence, I have a remark to make. — This 
valuation is unfavourable to First Classes; therefore, to the higher Colleges, 
which preponderate in Highest Houours. For, while the three inferior 
classes testify, that a candidate is above one minimum, they testify that he 
is below another ; whereas, the First Class, while it testifies that a Candi- 
date is above a certain minimum, takes no account of how much or how 
little he exceeds it. It thus contains and equalises the most unequal pro- 
ficiencies; that which is just competent, and that which is far more than 
competent. I was, however, unwilling that any possible objection should be 
taken on the ground, — that the valuation was, in any respect, arbitrary. 
Accordingly, I allow every advantage to those Houses which rejoice in their 
amount of respectable, though humbler honours. 

A Double First evidences both talent and a power of application. But it 
only proves that a candidate (with competent ability) has prepared himself 
in two complements, each equal to the amount required for a First Class. 
Of more it testifies nothing. 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 657 

this department, we find that four Houses, (two Colleges and two 
Halls,) containing above a hundred undergraduates, have during 
the decade no First Class Honours at all. — Again, discounting 
these, and comparing only the Houses which have compassed this 
distinction, we find that one College is, on this standard, eighteen 
times more efficient than another. — Finally, the same discount 
being made, the valued classes afford a similar result ; some 
Colleges, by a full average, in this the principal department, 
approving themselves four and a half and, the discount not 
made, ten, times better instruments of education than others. 

In Discipline Mathematical, the difference, if less important, 
is hardly less signal. During the decade, seven Houses, (three 
Colleges and four Halls,) and with an average of undergraduates 
considerably above two hundred, shew no First Class Honours ; — 
and of these, two (a College and a Hall) have no Honour, even oj 
the lowest. — Again, discounting these, and taking only the Houses 
which have attained to a first class, still we find, in this respect, 
one College more than ten times superior to another. — Finally, 
making the same discount ; on the criterion of the whole Honours 
valued, College excels College, as an educational organ, by nearly 
a twelvefold difference. 

But in the last place, [discounting All Souls and the Halls), and 
taking the half proportion of the highest College as a mean, we 
have the following results : 

L. H. — In Valued Classes : three colleges are of the very mean 
(1:0*8); eight above ; and eight below it. — In First Classes : 
of the mean (1 : 8), we have one college ; above it three ; and 
below it fifteen. 

D. M. — In Valued Classes : we have of the mean (1 : 2 • 4) one 
college ; above it seven ; and below it eleven. — In First Classes : 
there are above the mean (1 : 18) four colleges; and below it 
fifteen.* 



* I may append the following proportions, though I see there are probably 
several minor inaccuracies. But I cannot go through the labour of correction ; 
more especialh T as they are irrelevant to my argument, and do not affect 
the general result. 

A) Litera Humaniores. Proportion of — 
All classified (923), to all (here) unhonoured graduates (1932 ?), as 1 : 2-1 
The three higher classes (609), to all graduates below them (2110), as 1: 3*5 
The two higher classes (324), to all graduates below them (2395), as 1 : 7*0 
The highest class (104), to all graduates below it (2615), as . 1 : 25 • 3 
The highest (104), to all other classes (K19), as . . .1:8- 

',• 



658 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

Now, it may well be, that the very best of these Houses accom- 
plishes far less, than, in other circumstances, it might. But this is 
not proved, — at least not obtrusively. It is, however, proved, that 
some of the Oxford Houses, throwing out the worst, and judging 
only by the most favourable criterion, — that some of the Oxford 
Houses now perform, as academical instruments, five, — ten, — fifteen, 
— ay twenty times more than others. But it is clear, that, unless 
from ignorance or compulsion, no one in his senses would employ 
a workman, pay him too the wages of a first-rate artificer, who is 
worse, — not to say, five, ten, twenty times worse, than a brother 
operative. Yet the father, who would deem it unimaginable to 
send his son to a second-rate dancing-school, complacently enters 
him of a tenth-rate College ; where the youth is soon, by precept 
and example, accomplished for life, — as a conceited ignoramus, a 
hopeless idler ; whilst the State standing by, tolerates, nay pro- 
tects the illegal monopoly, which a body of men, wholly unquali- 
fied, as a body, for instructors, have long usurped, in the privileged 
seminaries of the English Church and of the English nation. 

Looking again to the Table in its second part, we see, in some 
degree, how these startling differences arise. We see, that the 
relative eminence of the Houses, estimated by the academical 
honours of the taught, is not at variance with the academical 
distinction of the teachers. We see further, how the general 
academical eminence of the instructors, is not such as to qualify 
them to assume, far less exclusively to engross, the function of 
academical education. A competent education supposes, that the 
educator possesses two, and two conjunct, qualities : 1°, that he 
should be able to aid, to aid but not to relieve, his pupil in the 

B) Disciplines Mathemalicce. Proportion of — 

All classified (255), to all (here) imhonourccl graduates (2618 ?), as 1 : 10 ' 3 
The three higher classes (149), to all graduates below them (1002), as 1:13-0 
The two higher classes (108), to all graduates below them (1943), as 1 : 18 ■ 
The highest class (45), to all graduates below it (2000), as . 1 : 40 • 1 

The highest (45), to all the other classes (210), as . . . 1:5- 

C) Both Departmetits. Proportion of — 

All the Mathematical (255), to all the Literary Honours (923), as 1 : S ■ 6 
Exclusive honours in D.M. (136?) to exc. honours in L II. (822?), as 1 : 6'0 
Men honoured (958?), to men unhonoured (1796), as . .1:1 '9 

First class in D.M. (45), to First class in L.H. (1C4), as . . 1:2*3 
Men of First class in L.II. not in D.M. (79V) to whole class (104), as 1 : 1 
Men of First class in D.M. not in L.H. (10?) to whole cli as 1:4- :> 

Double Firsts (10), to all other graduates (2865 ?), as . . 1 : _• 

Double Firsts (10), to all other honoured graduates (958?), as . I : !•:» ■ 8 



OXFORD AS IT IS. G59 

effort of attaining knowledge ; 2°, that he should, in his own per- 
son, exhibit a pattern of learning, capable of inspiring his pupil 
with discontent at any present advancement, and a resolution to 
be satisfied with no humble acquisition. These conjunct condi- 
tions, the collegial instructors of Oxford are seen, by the Oxford 
standard itself, not only not to fulfil, but actually to reverse. 
" Ignorance on stilts." For they are, in general, unable either 
to assist their pupils in, or to animate them to, an ever higher 
progress; whereas they are peculiarly adapted to infect them 
with discouragement, to affect them w r ith disgust, or to lull them 
into a self-satisfied conceit. — {To say nothing of the Halls :) 

As to Literce Humaniores, the Highest Honours are not, even 
in this primary department, attained by the great body of those 
who assume the collegial office of education. — Of Instructors, 
sixty-six in number, above a half (37) are not of the First 
Class ; of the Tutors, in number forty-nine, nearly a half (23) are 
similarly deficient ; and the same is true of about five sixths (14) 
of the seventeen simple Readers. Only a single College (Balliol*) 

* It afforded me great satisfaction to find, that Balliol, the oldest College 
in the University, stands so decidedly pre-eminent in this comparative esti- 
mate of the present efficiency of its Houses; a College, in which I spent the 
happiest of the happy years of youth, which is never recollected but with 
affection, and from which, as I gratefully acknowledge, I carried into life a 
taste for those studies which have constituted the most interesting of my 
subsequent pursuits. 

I. Looking to the Instructed. 

In the first place, the Honours being absolutely considered. — Here, not 
distinguishing the two departments : — Balliol surpasses every other House in 
the number of these, high and low, indifferently added, (117), — except Christ 
Church ; but Christ Church, by far the largest House in the University, 
whilst it exceeds Balliol in the number of Honours, of all kiuds and degrees, 
by one-fourth (29), exceeds it also in the number of competitors for these by 
five-fourths (102). — Again, distinguishing the departments : — Balliol main- 
tains the same superiority in either, as in both. — Of Highest (or First Class) 
Honours ; Balliol, of all the Houses, exhibits, — most in the combined depart- 
ments (23), — most in the Literce Humaniores (17), — most in the Disciplines 
Mathematicce (6). In the first and second respect, its Honours are, in fact, 
nearly double those of any other House ; whilst Christ Church, a College so 
much more numerous, shows only of these, in theL. H., seven, in theD. M., 
three. 

In the second place, considering the number of Honours in proportion to 
the number of undergraduates : — Balliol stands first, whether we confound 
the two departments or distinguish them. — And taking the Highest Honours : 
Balliol, in like manner, proportionally surpasses every other House, whether 
the First Classes be drawn indifferently from both departments or specially 



660 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

lias all its instructors, and these here amount, to five, of the Highest 
Class ; whereas, in three, no instructor whatever exhibits a similar 

from each : — with exceptions of two lesser Colleges ; it being very slightly 

surpassed by Corpus in L. H., by Merton and Corpus in D.M Balliol, 

likewise, stauds highest in the amount, absolute and proportional, of its 
" Double Firsts" — three : this number being only not a third of the comple- 
ment obtained in all the Colleges during the decade ; St John's alone exhi- 
biting more than one Finally, valuing the classes, by making the fourth a 

fourth part of the first, Balliol (though this valuation be hardly fair, and 
hardly fair to it,) still predominates, both in the conjoined departments ; and. 
with two exceptions of close equality, in these as severally distinguished. — 
Of the relative superiority of Balliol in the inferior classes of Honour in either 
department, I must refer to the Table. 

(In referring to the. Calendar of 1851, which I have recently obtained, I 
find that the relative superiority of Balliol is still more decisively marked 
during the three following years. With far less than half the number of com- 
petitors, Balliol carries» off three times (9) the number of the highest literary 
honours obtained by the largest college, Christ Church (3) ; whilst Merton 
and Corpus, the Colleges which, in this respect, are nearest to Balliol, show 

during these years no literary First Classes at all In the valued classes, 

Balliol is also superior (to say nothing of Christ Church) to both Merton and 
Corpus, in L. H. ; but is rather inferior to these in D. M. — Balliol, Univer- 
sity, and Christ Church have also each a Double First.) 
IE. Looking to the Instructors. 

Balliol is the only House, (as stated in the text,) in which all the Teachers 
(Tutors and Readers) are First- Class- men ; and the only College in which 
these are all First Class men in L. H. Balliol likewise surpasses every other 
House, both in the absolute, and in the proportional number of Highest 
Honours shown by its Instructors in the two departments, taken together ; 
as also in the department of L. H. alone. — Indeed, only two Colleges besides 
Balliol, (Merton and Exeter,) have even all their Tutors of the First (lass 
in L. H., and in the former of these the Tutors are only two. Id Christ 
Church and Jesus the five Instructors have, in either department, among 
them, only a single Highest Honour. — Balliol, in fine, is the only College in 
which the Readers are all distinguished by the same Highest Honour : with 
the single exception of University, and in that college there is only a single 
Reader. These are three out of sixteen. (Of the Mathematical department, 
as of minor importance, I say nothing.) 

This relative superiority, both in teacher and taught, shows how greatly 
collegia! and academical efficiency is, in the present state of the English 
Universities, dependent on the character of the Tutors, and consequently, on 
the personal— on the accidental qualities of a Head : tor the Head poss 
ili practice the nomination of Tutors, and, in general, the value of the instruc- 
tion is determined by him. And l")r Jenkvns, as Master of Balliol, may 
fairly claim, for his own, the comparative excellence o( his House : as mainly 
is it to his zeal, intelligence, and Liberality, (though the merit of his prede- 
cessor ought not to be forgotten,) that this College has now long occupied so 
great, and yet so unobtrusive, a pre-eminence among the educational in-ti- 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 661 

Honour. Seven colleges show their instructors thus classified, in 
only the proportion — of one in five (2), — of one in four (1), — of 
one in three (4). And so forth. 

The Discipline Mathematical are, in difficulty and importance, 
greatly inferior to the Literse Humaniores ; but, even to this 
inferior department, the collegial teachers are, as a body, obtru- 
sively inadequate. — The Tutors, the principal and only regular 
instructors, whilst not less than one-half of them have been of the 
First Class in L. H., show less even than a sixth part of the body 
in the First Class ofD. M. They are even excelled in this by the 
mere Readers. None of the Colleges shews this Honour in the 
highest proportion ; none, in fact, shews it in a higher proportion 
to the number of instructors, than as one to three, except two 

tutions of Oxford. The undergraduates of Balliol are not drawn from the 
chosen pupils of a great classical school ; they are not elected to the College 
for their previous acquirements, and after a wide competition ; they are not 
a few foundation scholars, but, by a great preponderance, independent mem- 
bers. A certain minimum, indeed, of scholarship is, I believe, now wisely 
made a requisite of admission. But the main reason of the average superi- 
ority of the Balliol men, in the final examination, must be sought for, in a 
better awakening within the College, of their studious activity, and in their 
superior tuition. The single advantage which Balliol may claim, is — that 
its Fellowships are open ; and the instructors, therefore, may be all competent 
to the work. Merton, the second College, both in true historical antiquity, 
and in educational eminence, has great advantages, from its Portionists (14), 
a large proportion of its undergraduates, being (to say nothing of its clerks) 
elected by the College, after a trial of comparative merit, and from a large 
sphere of competition. But nothing could stand against Corpus, the third 
College as an educational institution, if it did not burthen itself by an 
extra weight of Gentlemen Commoners (6). The " Scholars" (20), who 
constitute the far greatest amount of its undergraduates, are all elected by 
the College from a wide enough circle ; they are, therefore, in a great mea- 
sure, picked men. And so in Lincoln, University, and the other higher 
Colleges. All this only enhances the merit of Balliol. But how much of 
collegial efficiency, with and apart from such advantages, is owing to the 
character of a Collegial Head, is known to those who have any practical 
acquaintance with the English academical system. By him, through the 
spirit which he diffuses, is principally determined the literary level of the 
Fellows, and altogether, I may safely assert, the efficiency of the Tutors. 
But to raise, of necessity, the standard of tutorial competency, — to stimulate 
effectually, certainly, universally, the exertion of the student, — and to direct 
it, withal, on the most improving applications ; these are the primary condi- 
tions of any beneficial change in the present routine of the University and 
Colleges. 



662 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

(Queen's and University) ; whilst in five the instructors, and in 
ten the Tutors, are destitute of it altogether. — And so forth.* 

This is just the result we should anticipate from knowing two 
things : — Firstly, that the collegial body (Fellows and Head) was 
not in general constituted by capacity and learning ; — Secondly, 
that this body had been allowed furtively to usurp, from the Uni- 
versity, the whole function of academical instruction. Hence -may 
be explained : — 1°, The lamentable inefficiency of the system as 
a whole ; — 2°, The mighty difference between College and Col- 
lege, as academical instruments, either from the chronic accident 
of a better constitution, or from the temporary accident of a better 
collegial staff, and, consequently, a better collegial spirit ; — and 
3°, From this last accident, the remarkable contrast of a College 
with itself, in respect of its comparative efficiency at one period, 
and its comparative inefficiency at another. The Table manifests 
the two former ; and it may be proper here to say something in 
illustration of the third. 

But now, as I can afford only to be brief, I must limit the 
consideration to a single College, and to First Classes. I shall, 
however, take as the example, the most numerous, and in some 
respects the most favourably appointed College | in the Univer- 
sity — Christ Church. Of the times to be compared, the one 
shall be the period of thirty years from the first institution of 
classified examinations for the degree, in 1807 ; the other, the 
period of ten years ending in 1847, (the year with which the 
Calendar before me terminates.) The one year (1837) inter- 
mediate between these two periods, is, for uniformity and the 

* I am fully aware that an Examination like that of Oxford, is (to speak 
only of the L. H.) more to be relied on as a test of scholarship than of origi- 
nal talent, — in so far as these can be divorced ; and that other evidence, say 
that of an able book, ought to be subsequently taken into the estimate. But 
however limited, (and of its impartiality I have never heard a doubt,) this 
Examination ought, in the absence of any other proof, so far to be relied on ; 
more especially when a candidate, not of very nervous temperament, has 
aimed at academical distinction. But, in the case of the collegial instructors, 
such supplementary or countervailing evidence can rarely be adduced ; for, 
with two or three honourable exceptions, none of them have enabled the 
world to gage their competency, by publication. 

t I say only " in some respects :" for the " Students " of Christ Church 
are of those collegial " institutions" which Bishop Coplestone justly calls 
u the worst" (above, p. 399) ; and Christ Church admits a more numerous 
body of Gentlemen Commoners, the academical opprobrium, than any other 
House in the University. (See below.) 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 663 

convenience of numeration, omitted. The former period, be it 
observed, I shall call the three decades, the latter the one 
decade. 

Double Firsts. — In the three decades Christ Church, com- 
mencing the series,* shows of these, twenty-nine; whilst all the 
other Houses have, among them, only thirty-two. The former 
and latter have thus, on an average, severally, about one Double 
First a-year : but the honour, in proportion to the number of 
undergraduates, is in Christ Church, (with its 186,) rather more 
than 1:6; in the other Houses, (with their 1346,) rather more 
than 1 : 42. The College is thus seven times superior to the Uni- 
versity. — In the one decade, things are, however, marvellously 
changed. For whilst the other Houses maintain the proportion 
of 1 : 45 ; Christ Church, having now no Double First, sinks to 
the negative proportion of : 186, — disappears. 

First Classes in Literal Humaniores. — In the three decades 
Christ Church can boast of these honours, — ninety-seven ; that is, 
in their proportion to the number of undergraduates as 1 : 1 * 9 ; 
whereas the other Houses, together, have of these only two hun- 
dred and forty ; that is, in the same proportion, as 1:5*6. 
Christ Church, in this respect, is thus ahead of the University, 
in a threefold proportion. — The superiority is however reversed 
in the one decade : Christ Church now showing a proportion of 
only 1:9*0; whilst the rest of the University shows a propor- 
tion of 1 : 4 * 6, — that is, beats the College by two to one. — In the 
three decades, of these honours : Christ Church has an annual 
average of 3*2; the other Houses an annual average of only 

8 * In the one decade, on the contrary, Christ Church exhibits 

only an annual average of * 7 ; whilst the other Houses exhibit 
an annual average of 9 * 7. Christ Church has thus fallen to little 
more than a fifth of its former height ; whereas the University 
at large has, by nearly a fifth, arisen. 

First Classes in Discipline Mathematical. — In the three de- 
cades, Christ Church has of these, seventy-two; that is, in the 
proportion of honours to numbers, as 1:2*4; whilst the other 
Houses have of these only a hundred and thirty-six ; that is, in 
the same proportion, as 1 : 10 * 0. The College thus beats the 
University by more than four to one. — In the one decade, how- 
ever, this relation of superiority is again reversed ; the University 



* At the head of the series stands — Robertus Peel. 



064 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

now beating the College by more than two to one : for whilst 
Christ Church has sunk to a proportion of 1 : 21 • ; the other 
Houses continue to show that of 1 : 10 * 2. — In the three decades, 
the annual average of Christ Church is, 2 • 4 ; of the University 
at large, 4 ■ 5. — But in the one decade, whilst Christ Church has 
only 0*3; the general average, per annum, is 4*2. Thus the 
efficiency of the other Houses remains nearly stationary ; whereas 
that of Christ Church has dwindled even to an eighth. 

Such is the remarkable contrast of a College, in the spirit of 
study, to itself : Christ Church, in the former period, rising as 
proudly, far above the level of the University, as, in the latter, 
it has subsided humbly, far beneath it. A display of the causes 
of this declension I leave for those competent to the task ; but it 
will be found, I am assured, in the higher instruction and the 
higher example, consequently, in the higher standard and higher 
determination to attain it, once so honourably prevalent in the 
society, and now so unhappily suspended. But such fluctuations — 
such lamentable falls are only possible in an ill-regulated Univer- 
sity ; and it should be the aim of any academical improvement of 
Oxford, no longer to abandon the welfare of its students to the 
accidents — of private effort, the exception, of private remission, the 
rule, but securely to preserve, by public measures, in equable 
and proper tension, the exertion of all its alumni. 

Such (apart from all consideration of the objects taught) is the 
present state of educational efficiency in the Oxford Houses, as 
exhibited by the standard of the Oxford Examination. The 
institution of this standard was, indeed, decisive ; it constitutes 
even, as will hereafter be apparent, an epoch in the fortunes of 
the school. It is destined, in the long run, to raise the Univer- 
sity to its ancient supremacy above the Colleges, — or rather the 
Colleges to their proper level ; nor needs it any wizard to foresee, 
that the public Examination must issue in the overthrow of the 
present private and depressing usurpation. For meting, to a 
certain extent, the proportion of ability and acquirement found 
in its several graduates, this their relative proficiency it signalises 
and publishes to the world. The world is thus now enabled, as 
it was always entitled, to ask: — Why should the public, and 
exclusively privileged, education of Oxford be abandoned to those 
— whether College Heads or College Tutors — whom Oxford her- 
self reports, as comparatively incompetent; and this, moreover, 
to the banishment, from academical usefulness, of those whom 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 665 

Oxford also reports, to be of the worthiest among her sons ? The 
answer is precise. This is done : 1°, because the Heads of the 
collegial interest, were for a certain personal advantage in the 
state and church, unconstitutionally raised by a detestable prime 
minister (by Archbishop Laud,) to government and supremacy in 
the University, though, as a body, wholly unable, from their 
lights, and still less inclined from their interests, to administer 
the University, in furtherance of its essential ends. 2°, Because 
the collegial bodies have, through their Heads, for their private 
behoof, and, in violation of oath and statute, superseded the Uni- 
versity in the office of instruction. 3°, Because these bodies not 
being, in general, constituted by merit, their members, though 
latterly monopolising all privileged education, have been, in gene- 
ral, unable to reach even the higher ranks of academical suffi- 
ciency, far less the eminence which ought to be required of aca- 
demical instructors. And this last fact, — that the collegial mono- 
polists of university education are not in general the persons to 
be constituted into the guides, patterns, preceptors of studious 
youth : — this is proved, in the first place, by the standard of aca- 
demical sufficiency, the examination for degrees; and in the 
second, by a comparison, through an adequate period, of one 
House with another, and even of one House Avith itself, in regard 
of its efficiency as an instrument of education. For though the 
standard of the Examination be far too limited, and even within 
its limits far from perfect ; still, on the average, and in the 
absence of other evidence, it must be relied on ; and this w r e may 
more securely do, when we find that the public eminence of its 
instructors, and the public eminence of its graduates, are, in a 
College, not only not discordant, but far more in unison than 
might, perhaps, have been anticipated. Now judging by this 
combined standard, unless the collegial interests, as a whole, had 
been altogether incompetent to the work of academical instruc- 
tion, and left, in fact, without interference to do as little as it 
chose, the following results could not have been aiforded. For, 
as we have seen, {abstracting from All Souls and the Halls,) 
College varies from College, as an educational instrument: — 1°, 
in the more important department of L. H., on the higher stan- 
dard of First Classes, eighteenfold, and on the standard most 
favourable to mediocrity of Valued Classes, from four to Jive- 
fold; 2°, in the less important department of D. M., above ten 



666 APPENDIX III. EDUUCATIONAL. (C). 

times on the more ambitious criterion of First Classes, and nearly 
twelve times on the humbler criterion of Valued Classes. 

This difference of House and House ought, indeed, to fill us 
with astonishment ; at least, it utterly astonished me. For though 
prepared to expect not a small, I was wholly unprepared for the 
mighty, contrast which the collegial comparison in the Table 
manifests. I was aware, of course, that men — that youths are in 
ordinary little more than the passive reflectors of the education 
which they chance to receive ; but I was certainly pre-disposed 
to rate far higher the exceptive number of those, who, in a Uni- 
versity like Oxford, would pursue their studies independently of 
all external constraint, and to whom the offices of a Tutor should 
prove, in fact, more impediments than aids. Others too there 
were, and in numbers not to be overlooked, whom no tuition could 
avail to raise out of the low level to which native incapacity had 
doomed them. Finally, there were many, who sought, privately 
and without their College, for the tuition which they could not, 
satisfactorily at least, find publicly or within. All these classes 
were distributed throughout the Houses, and all it behoved to 
take into account, as tending to bring the Houses to an average 
equality. On this equalising tendency I had calculated much — 
too much indeed. For the statistics of the Table show how uni- 
formly, notwithstanding every equalising tendency, rank in the 
academical examinations is the result of a right preparatory tui- 
tion, and how rarely the honours of the University are won, 
except by competitors trained to victory through a course of 
sound collegial discipline. But such a discipline, though such 
be its effect, how seldom, if ever, is it now afforded by the Col- 
leges — in full efficiency ? For, admitting that the higher and 
fewer Colleges perform, in Oxford, all that, as educational insti- 
tutes, they should and can ; still on the other hand, the lower 
and more numerous Houses are seen, on the criterion of the 
University itself, to fail most signally in this essential function, 
which they pretend, and that exclusively, to discharge. Yet. in 
the midst of this manifold and obtrusive defalcation, the Church 
and the State look on ; the nation is quietly defrauded of the 
education for which it has especially provided ; whilst the exclu- 
sive privileges are still suffered to subsist, long after the condi- 
tions, on which alone these were originally conceded, have been 
illegally suspended. " Not individual persons only/* says the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 667 

great Herder, " but schools and universities, outlive themselves. 
In semblance, their body still survives, while the soul has long 
been fled, or they glide about, like shades of the departed, among 
the figures of the living. Once were thej so useful, and there 
lay in them the germ of a great developement. But all has its 
appointed limit. The form which still remains has overlived itself. 
Alas ! to what a century do they recall us ! To the strange tastes 
of long buried generations ! There they stand, establishments of 
a bygone time, in all its pressure ! They follow not the genius of 
the age, and, incapable of renewing with it their youth, have thus 
fallen from their ancient usefulnes." But the English Universi- 
ties, and Oxford in particular, though ancient, are not so much 
superannuated as diseased. Though enfeebled, certainly, they do 
not so much manifest the symptoms of death, as of a suspension, 
or rather metastasis, of life ; for their original, their statutory con- 
stitution is superseded, but superseded, not for public, but for 
private, advantage. The better hope, therefore, of their restora- 
tion. For the old and legal is gone ; while no respect is due to 
the modern, which has only too long been suffered perfidiously to 
usurp its place. Oxford may, indeed, be resembled to a vene- 
rable oak ; whose abated vigour is diverted from heart to bark, 
but this cortical life, now only manifested in its suckers, is, in fact, 
wholly expended in these parasitic offshoots, which, while they 
waste without replacing, are allowed to represent, as they con- 
ceal, the parent tree. 

" Stat magni nominis umbra. 

Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro 
Exuvias veteres populi, sacrataque gestans 
Dona ducum ; uec jam validis radicibus hserens, 
Pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos 
Effundens, trunco, non frondibus, efficit unibrani : 
At quanivis primo nutet casura sub Euro, 
Et quamvis circum sylvae se robore tollant, 
Sola tamen colitur." 

II. Such being Oxford as it is, I now proceed to Oxford (I 
shall not say, as it should, but) as it might be. For I would pro- 
pose a scheme of improvement, manifest and easy ; but not insi- 
nuate that a better might not be devised. In fact, as already 
indicated, I look not alone nor principally to what is theoretically 
the best, but to what is practically the most feasible. I limit 
myself, likewise, to the fundamental faculty, that of Arts or libe- 
ral instruction, and to the lower department of that faculty, — to 



068 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C . 

that, in which alone the University now pretends to educate. 
From all higher and more ambitious proposals I refrain ; refrain 
from all schemes of reform, which may lightly be desired, but 
may not lightly be accomplished. I would suggest obvious reme- 
dies for obvious vices ; and should prefer making use of the means 
already in appliance, to seeking after others which may specu- 
latively be superior. Accordingly, were the institutions of domes- 
tic superintendence and tutorial instruction, even in themselves 
defective, I should be unwilling to supersede them ; for the simple 
reason, that they are already established, and consuetudinary. It 
is easy also to wish, that Headships and Fellowships were, as they 
ought to be, made the reward of literary eminence ; but such a 
wish, it would be difficult if not impossible to realise. To found, 
therefore, a scheme of academical reform on this or any similar 
ideal, would be to frustrate it by anticipation. Any measure of 
practical reform ought, therefore, in my opinion, to attempt only 
to remove intolerable abuses, and to cure them only by the least 
violent substitutions. This, at least, in the first instance ; for 
Reformation should be gradual. The great end towards perfec- 
tion is, indeed, to initiate improvement. Every step forward 
necessitates an ulterior advance ; so true is the adage which old 
Hesiod has sung, — 'A^ %/xiov voturos. Thus the Oxford Examina- 
tion statutes were the first efforts of the University to rise out of 
the slough of abasement into which it had long subsided;* and 
the Examination, now affording an undeniable rule, by which to 
evince, that the Oxford Houses do not, in general, perform their 
arrogated office of instruction, in any satisfactory degree, at once 

* Before the Examination Statutes passed, after the commencement of 
the present century, Oxford awarded her degrees, from first to last, without 
trial, and independently of acquirement. — Crousaz, writing in 1725, says: — 
" In Oxford the new philosophy is known as little to its members as to the 
Australian savages ; and M. Bernard pleasantly remarks, that these worthies 
are a century or, two behind their age, and perhaps will so eternally remain. 
The spirit of Protestantism is hardly breathed in Oxford." (Logique, P. I., 
S. i., c. G.) — Wendeborn, who travelled through England before 1788, gives 
an amusing account of the Parses, Respondent, and the three Opponents, 
consuming the statutory time in profound silence, and the study of a novel 
or other entertaining work. (Beschreibung, &c, III. p. 218. 219.)— A simi- 
lar description of the ceremonial is given by Vicesimus Knox, (who, if I 
recollect, was himself of Oxford.) It will be found in his .Moral Essays, 
but the book is not at hand.— Cambridge, till lately, if not to the present 
day, bestows its degree on all and sundry who bring up a minimum of 
mathematics. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 669 

annihilates, by stultifying, all resistance on their part, whilst it 
cannot fail of determining, in public opinion, the necessity of an 
academical reform. But, in truth, the most zealous champions in 
the cause, may be looked for in those intelligent individuals, whom 
accident has connected with the collegial interest, and in the less 
efficient Houses ; for it is they who will naturally be most 
impressed with the academical inadequacy of their colleagues, — 
most ashamed of the inferior level of their Colleges, — and most 
active in originating and carrying out any feasible measure of 
improvement. — But the Examination not only manifests the 
urgency, it likewise affords the possibility, of reform. Through 
the influence of the Examination, the standard of literary qualifi- 
cation has in Oxford been gradually rising ; and accordingly the 
melioration would now be easy, which formerly could have only 
resulted in failure. Though far inferior to the Oxford Examina^ 
tion, that of Cambridge, as earlier, caused likewise an earlier 
advance. For without such a criterion, how perverse soever it 
may be, the collegial elections would now, as heretofore, be there 
throwing merit out of account : and there the Tutors might still 
be whistling to their pupils the old tune, which, as pupils, had 
been piped to them ; — Cambridge might still be Cartesian in 
Physics, as Physics are still, indeed, its peculiar Philosophy, and 
Mathematics all its Logic. 

In the subsequent observations I shall pursue the following 
order : — i.) Recapitulate the contrast between the legal and illegal 
in the education which the great English Universities, and in 
particular Oxford, aiford in their fundamental faculty ; — ii.) State 
the ends, the full accomplishment of which constitutes the perfec- 
tion of an university, as a school of liberal study ; — hi.) Compare 
the means, now at work, especially in Oxford, with the ends which 
such a seminary ought to fulfil ; — and iv.) Suggest such changes 
as may most easily be made, to render that school a more efficient 
instrument for the purpose of general and preparatory education. 

i.) Contrast between the legal and illegal, in the education which, 
with more especial reference to Oxford, the English Universities 
afford in their fundamental faculty. 

1°, De jure : The necessary academical discipline is public and 
common ; given by the University in public prelection and public 
exercise. — De facto : The sole academical discipline is private and 



670 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

peculiar ; given by the several Houses in their domestic tuition. 
(See pp. 389, 390, 441, 445.) 

2°, Dejure: The University stands provided with a large staff 
of Praelectors or Professors. — De facto : These are now extinct, 
with the exception of a few, that remain " the shadows of a 
name." All public Exercise, of old thought justly more important 
than prelection, is, in like manner, defunct, — nay even forgotten. 
(See pp. 394, 397, 425, 445, 446, 448.) 

3°, Dejure: The domestic instructor or Tutor, is any respect- 
able graduate, chosen by the pupil, nor does it even appear that 
they must be of the same House ; and the Tutor's principal func- 
tion is, by statute, to look after his pupil's hair, clothes, and 
catechism. — De facto : The Tutorial office is exclusively usurped 
by the College Fellows, who are seldom Fellows from any literary 
merit ; out of them the Tutor is nominated by the College Head, 
who is seldom Head for his ability or learning ;* to a Tutor, so 

* I have elsewhere (p. 399, sq.) shewn, how the collegial foundations 
were, in Oxford, not intended to supply ability, but to relieve want ; and 
that their members were, in general, not dependent for their appointment on 
any academical merit. In addition thereto, and with special reference to the 
Heads, I may adduce the testimony of Mr Ward, late Fellow of Trinity Col- 
lege, and Deputy High Steward of the University of Oxford. In the Preface 
to his translation of the Oxford University Statutes (18-15) he says : — 

" There is nothing, therefore, in the original destination of a Head of a 
College, or in the statutory terms of his elevation, which involves his aptitude 
for a governor of the universal academical body. But is he at all better 
qualified for the purpose under the alterations of the old collegiate constitu- 
tions, which a change of the national religion, and no less of the national 
manners, has effected in the long course of four or five hundred years ? The 
maintenance of the Roman Catholic Faith being the ground- work of collegiate 
foundations, the founders have, in almost all cases, insisted on their establish- 
ments being governed by an ecclesiastical person; and even where the sta- 
tutes are not imperative on this point, the natural course of things leads to 
the same result. Of all the nineteen Colleges, only one at this time is 
governed by a layman. The Heads of Colleges are, as has been said before. 
elective ; and it will readily appear, that if the founders themselves left the 
general advantage of the University quite out of view, while considering the 
qualifications of their principal College officer, the interest and position of the 
statutory electors are nearly concerned not to supply the defective ingredient. 
On the avoidance of the Headship, one place is of course gained by every 
Fellow who has a vested interest in the foundation, but an adroit exercise of 
the franchise may convert the single vacancy into two or more steps of 
advancement to the junior members, and the election, in consequence, usually 
falls on the incumbent of the best living or other office or preferment belonging 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 671 

qualified and appointed, every intrant to University and College 
must subject himself ; and on this Fellow, or his associate Tutors, 
is the University now wholly dependent for all the academical 
discipline afforded to the alumnus. (See pp. 395-402, 426.) 

to the soeiety, and his promotion creates a fresh vacancy, perhaps a series of 
vacancies. But it may be said that the motive of interest would only attach 
to a portion of the electors ; another remains, which must equally affect the 
whole body, or at least the residents. All the College codes give most 
extensive powers to the Head of the society ; he must be constantly in resi- 
dence, too, within the same precincts as the Fellows ; it stands to reason, 
therefore, that a much more effective and natural consideration in the choice 
of a future next-door neighbour, who should be a censor, and must be a 
superior, will be his character for complaisance and inoffensiveness, rather than 
any overstrained anxiety for the honour or advantage which will accrue to the 
University. A good, easy Head of a clerical club will be in much greater demand 
among its thirty or forty Fellows and incumbents, than a gifted sage, if any such 
the society possesses, who will exert himself to improve the system of instruction 
pursued in the University. 

"If, therefore, the disposition to acquiesce in the existing state of things 
within the walls of his own College, constitutes, in all likelihood, the most 
operative recommendation for the Head of a House, what hopes can.be fairly 
entertained that he will be more energetic in his accessory character of a 
Governor of the general academical corporation ? But it is only necessary 
to look to their own volume of the Caroline statutes, to form a judgment of 
the legislative capacity of the Board ; for they have there put it on record, 
under the name of Additions to Laud's Code. The staple of these additions 
is the substitution of one form of words for another, equally untrue or inappli- 
cable to the present times ; fresh incense offered to mere rank and wealth, 
and new sumptuary enactments, which must be illusory, so long as Laud's 
Statute (Tit. iii. sect. 1) is suffered to remain unrepealed, and to drive all the 
Undergraduates of the University into some twenty Colleges and Halls, never 
calculated by their founders for the superintendence of a fifth of their existing 
numbers. It may be sufficient here to state, generally, that at about the com- 
mencement of the present century it became apparent to the University itself, 
that, either from the natural working of the Caroline Code, or from its forma- 
lities only having been kept up, whilst its spirit had been allowed to expire, 
Oxford had virtually abdicated instruction, and was converted into a mere 
market of degrees for those persons who could throw away the time and afford 
the pecuniary means, which had become the chief conditions for acquiring 
them. An effort was therefore indispensable, and the University was saved 
from extinction as a nursery of learning, by the New Examination Statute — 
a vast improvement, no doubt, upon the previous method, but still confes- 
sedly, at the present day, after forty years experience, and a multitude of 
amendments, liable to very great and striking objections. 

" From a legislative body, composed like that which has been described, 
it is hopeless to expect any comprehensive scheme of reformation proceeding from 
itself: perhaps it is also unreasonable, for it never has legislated independ- 
ently on a great scale," &c. (p. ix. sq.) 



072 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL 

As contrary to reason, contrary to statute, and contrary to 
oath, the present system (if system it may be called), can not 
long endure. The necessity of perjury must be made to cease ; 
law and fact must again be brought into union, and their subse- 
quent separation should be precluded. Finally, the actual ought 
to be approximated to the rational. Such approximation is not, 
however, to be accomplished by a mere return from the modern 
and illegal to the old and statutory. For though the statutory 
constitution of the University and its instruction was, in former 
ages, far superior to the mutilated fragment of education now 
long alone precariously attempted by intrusive, interested, and 
incompetent means, it would, as has been said, be a rash inference 
to conclude, that what is old, and even statutory, is all good ; — 
that what is new, and even illegal, is all vicious. This leads us 
to the second head of consideration. 

ii.) The Ends which a University in its fundamental faculty, 
that is, as a seminary of liberal accomplishment, is bound to 
propose. 

But before stating the ends of a University, it is proper to 
premise a distinction and explanation. For a University in ordi- 
nary, and in ordinary acceptation, involves two very different 
things : — involving 1°, what is properly the University, a school, 
to wit, for liberal or general knowledge ; and 2°, a collection of 
special schools, for one, two, three, or more of the learned profes- 
sions. In the former respect, the student is considered, as an end. 
into himself; his perfection, as a man simply, being the aim of 
his education. This is the end proposed in, what is academically 
known as, the Faculty of Arts or of Philosophy. In the latter 
respect, the learner is not viewed as himself an end, that end 
being now something out of himself: for not his perfection as a 
man, but his dexterity as a professional man, — in a word, his use- 
fulness as an instrument, has become the aim of his scientific pre- 
paration. This end is that proposed in, what are academically 
known as, the Faculties of Theology, Law, Medicine, &c. : and in 
this relation, a University is, in fact, only a supplemental and 
contingent aggregation of special schools, the only connection that 
these have with each other, or with the University, being, that 
they all hold out to bo liberal, that is, they all hold out to educate 
to professions which presuppose always a liberal accomplishment, 
if not always an education in the liberal faculty, or faculty of arts. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 673 

In certain universities, indeed, and in certain of their professional 
faculties, a degree is now given without a liberal education ; but in 
these cases, the profession has ceased to be liberal or learned, and 
the instruction by the academical faculty is really that of a mere 
special school. Pro tanto, the University has, in fact, illegally 
abrogated itself; and it would be difficult to say, whether the 
English or the Scottish Universities have acted more contrary to 
law and common sense, in their grant of medical degrees, the 
former without professional, the latter without liberal, education. 
The latter certainly is the more dangerous to the public, if the 
more profitable to the medical professors. — ~Nor is historical fact 
here at variance with philosophical theory. This distinction of a 
University into two parts, — into a part essential or fundamental, 
and into a part contingent or accessory, is shown in the chrono- 
logical developement of academical institutions. The older Univer- 
sities (as Paris, Oxford, &c.) originated in the fundamental Faculty 
of Arts, the other Faculties being subsequently by accident, and 
at different times, one or more of them, annexed. And at present, 
the English Universities, though still allowed to exercise the pri- 
vilege of granting degrees in the special faculties, have, it may be 
fairly said, long virtually abandoned the relative instruction ; so 
that Oxford and Cambridge are now what they were at first, — 
schools exclusively of liberal instruction, but of liberal instruction, 
it should be added, not in all, but only in certain arbitrary 
branches. 

Limiting, therefore, our view by the limitation of the English 
Universities, to the essential faculty alone, the abstract ends 
necessarily proposed by a University may be stated, as in all, 
three : — lo, to supply competent instruction ; 2°, to excite the 
requisite exertion; and 3°, to grant a true certificate of pro- 
ficiency. These being the ends which a university necessarily 
proposes, the degree in which it accomplishes these, will neces- 
sarily determine the degree of its perfection. 

To accomplish these abstract ends, a University must employ 
certain concrete means. But though means are necessarily con- 
ducive to ends, it is not necessary that each several end should be 
exclusively effected by its several mean. One mean may conduce 
to several ends, and one end may be subserved by a plurality of 
means ; nay, what is directly an end, may also indirectly operate 
as a mean. Thus, the Examination for a certificate of proficiency, 
i. e. for a Degree, though its immediate end be the ascertainment 

2u 



674 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

of a certain minimum of learning, yet, mediately, this Examina- 
tion, with its proximate end, may become a powerful mean towards 
another end, the excitement, to wit, of exertion in the student. 
This, therefore, makes the disintrication and abstract distinction 
of the ends and means proposed by a University inconvenient, and 
without detail impossible ; accordingly, in conformity to conve- 
nience, I shall simply enumerate, (attempting no speculative classi- 
fication,) as ends, all that a University should accomplish, although 
these accomplishings may, strictly considered, often partake more 
of the character of means. 

First end — As a University, even in all its faculties, cannot 
teach the omne scibile, and as there is an order and subordina- 
tion among the departments of knowledge ; a University, more 
especially in its fundamental faculty, is bound to secure by pre- 
ference those studies which, supposed by the others, are neces- 
sary, not only on their own account, but for the sake of ulterior 
progress. In other words : a University, though it cannot com- 
pass the cycle of knowledge, is required to supply its introduc- 
tion. This manifest principle has, however, too frequently been 
neglected in our modern Universities — nay, even reversed. Teach- 
ing every thing, they teach nothing : — 

Njjtt;o/, ovk hvoYiaxv oaa nhsou % t u,tav 7rocur6$. 

Second end — A University should supply competent, and exclude 
incompetent, instructors. This supposes that the instructor should 
possess not merely an empirical knowledge of his subject, but a 
philosophical ; that he should know it, not merely as a complexus 
of facts, but as a system of effects and causes ; and that, besides 
his synthetic comprehension of the whole, he should have ana- 
lytically examined how the parts are dependent on each other, 
and how they mutually concur to the constitution of the whole. 
If he teach an author, he must be familiar, not merely with the 
work he teaches, but with all the writings of his author, and the 
relative opinions of the learned. If he teach a doctrine, he must 
be acquainted with it, not merely in itself, but in its connections, 
scientific and historical. In short, as Aristotle admirably shows, 
— " The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge is the power 
of teaching." (Metaph. I. i.) But how many teachers are desti- 
tute of all this knowledge, and never even suspect their deficiency ! 
How many confidently profess, who are wholly unqualified, to 
instruct ! — But beside his ability to teach, an academical instructor 
should be actuated by a good will. He should be ready to solve 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 675 

any difficulty propounded, and to afford aid and advice to his 
pupils in the conduct of their studies. This was, indeed, enjoined 
by statute in several of the older Universities ; and in Oxford the 
public Readers (now defunct) were required to remain for a cer- 
tain time daily after lecture, in order to answer all pertinent 
questions that might be put to them. 

Third end — A University ought likewise to place conspicuously 
before the eyes of the student, and, of course, more especially to 
secure in its instructors, high living examples of erudition and 
ability. For, in proportion as the academical standard is elevated, 
will be the discontent of its alumni with any pitch of attainment 
inferior to the highest, and their consequent effort towards an ever 
loftier accomplishment; whereas, the natural result of a low 
standard in the teacher, will be (independently of other evils,) 
self-contentment and conceit, or disgust and inertion, in the taught. 
The beginning — the middle — the end, indeed, of wisdom, is the 
consciousness of ignorance ; the consciousness of ignorance is thus 
the condition of progress. Hence the aim of every intelligent 
governor of a University has been, even apart from formal instruc- 
tion, to obtrude the highest patterns of learned talent on the 
immediate observation of its teachers and its taught, in order to 
repress, in all, any tolerance of mediocrity : aware, with Bion, 
that " The conceit of knowledge is the arrestment of progress ; " as 
with Seneca, — " Multos potuisse ad sapientiam pervenire, nisi 
putassent, se pervenisse." This enlightened policy I have else- 
where endeavoured to illustrate.* (See pp. 362-365.) 

Fourth end — As the student comes (or must be supposed to 
come) to the University without a love of knowledge for its own 

* The universal sense of mankind has indeed established this as a maxim 
of education. The following rise to my recollection : — 

The Arabian Sage : — " A man is wise, so long as he seeks after wisdom, 
but a fool when he conceits it to be mastered." 

The Rabbi Eleazar: — " Where there is no reverence, there is no instruc- 
tion." 

" Brassicanus asked of Erasmus, — How a man might become learned? 
The immediate answer was : — ' If he haunted the company of the learned ; 
if he listened submissively to the sayings of the learned ; if he diligently 
read and re-read the writings of the learned ; but above all, if he never deemed 
that he himself was learned.'' " 

This may enable us to solve the seeming paradox : — In a countiy, where 
earning is rare, the men of learning are common ; in a country, where learn- 
ing is common, the men of learning are rare. 



676 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

sake, as indeed he comes there, not with studious habits already 
formed, but, in fact, with these to be acquired ; and as there 
are likewise objects of strong alien interest continually soliciting 
him to remit his efforts : a University is bound to apply such 
external incitements as, by relation to his previous dispositions, 
may overbalance all counter seductions, and render his studies, 
from the first to the last, more pleasurable than their intermission. 
For, as Isocrates and Aristotle have well expressed it : — " The 
roots of discipline are bitter, while the fruits are sweet;" and 
as Plato, followed by his greater disciple, untranslatably says : — 
" UAu viOog hoi Mas." Such a stimulus is furnished in the desire of 
distinction — in the goad of emulation, — affections strong in all, 
but characteristically strongest in the young, (" lovers of honour, 
yet still more lovers of victory "); and these, if they be constantly 
and efficiently applied, determine a sedulous application in the 
pursuit of knowledge, even while such application may still be 
irksome in itself. " In learning," says Bacon, " the flight will 
be slow [and low] without some feathers of ostentation ; " and 
thus is it, that, through emulation and the passion for distinction, we 
are enabled to fulfil his precept : — " As man's nature runs either 
to herbs or weeds, let us seasonably water the one and destroy the 
other." For, whilst mental effort is the one condition of all men- 
tal improvement, yet this effort is at first and for a time painful : 
positively painful, in proportion as it is intense; and comparatively 
painful, as it abstracts from other and positively pleasurable acti- 
vities. It is painful, because its energy is imperfect, difficult, 
forced. But, as the effort is gradually perfected, gradually facili- 
tated, it becomes gradually pleasing ; and when, finally perfected, 
that is, when the power is fully developed, and the effort, changed 
into a spontaneity, becomes an exertion absolutely easy, it remains 
purely, intensely, and alone unsatiably pleasurable. For pleasure 
is nothing but the concomitant or reflex of the unforced and 
unimpeded energy of a natural faculty or acquired habit ; the 
degree and permanence of the pleasure being also ever in propor- 
tion to the intensity and purity of the mental energy. The great 
postulate in education is, therefore, — to induce the pupil to enter 
and to persevere in such a course of effort, good, in its result, 
and delectable, but primarily and in itself irksome. " There is 
no royal road to learning." " The Gods," says Epicharmus, 
" sell us everything for toil ; " and the curse inherited from Adam, 
that " in the sweat of his face, man should eat his bread," holds 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 677 

good of every human acquisition. For, "manliveth not by bread 

alone ; " 

— " Vivere 
Non esse solum vescier aethere, 
Sed laude virtutisque fructu 

Egregiam satiare mentem." 

And with immediate reference to the young ; it would be pecu- 
liar folly to expect, that they, especially, should be ever made to 
climb the hill of knowledge, stinted of their natural requirements 
by the way, — the refreshment of honour, the stimulant of com- 
petition. These affections are implanted in us, implanted, conse- 
quently for the wisest purposes ; and although they may, of 
course, be misapplied, the inference, from the possibility of their 
abuse to the inexpediency of their employment, is futile. Nothing, 
indeed, can evince a profounder ignorance of human nature, or a 
more disgraceful neglect of the most efficient means within its 
grasp, than for a University — than, indeed, for any seminary of 
education, to leave unapplied these great promoting principles of 
juvenile activity ; and passively to take for granted, that its pupils 
will act precisely as they ought, though with every temptation 
seducing them from effort, and no appropriate inducement sup- 
plied in favour of studious exertion. 

Fifth end — As knowledge (man being now considered as an 
end to himself) is only valuable as it exercises, and by exercise 
developes and invigorates, the mind ; so a University, in its liberal 
faculty, should specially prefer those objects of study which call 
forth the strongest and most unexclusive energy of thought, and 
so teach them too, that this energy shall be most fully elicited 
in the student. For speculative knowledge, of whatever kind, is 
only profitable to the student, in his liberal cultivation, in as much 
as it supplies him with the object and occasion of exerting his 
faculties ; since powers are only developed in proportion as they are 
exercised, that is, put forth into energy. The mere possession of 
scientific truths is, for its own sake, valueless ; and education is 
only education, in as much as it i at once determines and enables 
the student to educate himself. Nor is there time to lose. In 
fact, it is now or never ; for, as Rousseau truly says : — " L' inha- 
bitude de penser dans la jeunesse en ote la faculte durant 
le reste de la vie." — The objects of knowledge, which combine 
more entirely this end with the first, ought thus to be the prin- 
cipal branches of primary academical education. To determine 



678 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

what these objects, what these branches are, would lead us into a 
discussion which, at present, I willingly avoid ; but the educational 
exercises employed by Universities in calling forth the self acti- 
vity of their alumni, are the following : — 1. Examination ; 2. Dis- 
putation ; 3. Repetition; 4. Written Composition; 5. Teaching, 
in order to learn ; 6. Conversation with, questioning of, the 
learned ; 7. Social study. — Of these in detail. 

1. Examination. — By this is meant Examination in the course 
of study : and, perhaps, in the circumstances of our modern Uni- 
versities, this, of all academical exercises, is the one most gene- 
rally useful ; provided it be fully and fairly carried out, — which 
it rarely if ever is. — In the first place, it affords a good, if not, 
indeed, the best of fields, in which emulation may be exerted ; 
but the condition of this exertion is that the competitors be keen. 
Keen however they will be, if the examination be regular, frequent, 
and well conducted, — if their own number be large, and the indi- 
viduals not too unequal, — finally, if the competition be public, and 
the accruing honour signal. Examination is thus incompatible with 
inertion. — In the second place, it constrains to accurate, minute, 
and comprehensive study, — in a word, secures the knowledge of a 
subject, in whole and in part, in itself and in its relations ; (a repeti- 
tion of the words, either of the book read or of the lecture heard, 
should, of course, be disallowed.) It thus calls out self activity, 
and requiring clear and distinct thinking, both in examiner and 
examinee, counteracts the prevailing pestilence of slovenly, de- 
sultory, effeminate reading. — In the third place, it educates to 
presence of mind. — In the fourth, to prompt and precise expres- 
sion. — In the fifth, it abates conceit, and convinces of deficiency. 
— In the sixth, it impressively teaches, even the mere auditor. 

Examination can be realized in two forms, — forms which may, 
indeed, should be combined. For it is — 1° oral ; 2° in writing* 

* The following is a very compendious abridgment of what Melanchthon 
says in praise of academical Examinations, in his Declamation De Studiis 
Adolescentum (1529 ?) The whole oration is well worthy of perusal : it will 
be found in his Declamationes, t. i., p. 486 ; in the Selects Declamationes, 
t. i., p. 465 sq. ; in the Corpus Reformatprum, vol. xi. p. 181 ; and in other 
collections. — " No academical exercise can be more useful than that of Exa- 
mination. It whets the desire of learning, it enhances the solicitude of study, 
while it animates the attention to whatever is taught. Every student is 
alarmed, lest aught should escape him which it behoves him to observe. 
This anxiety incites him also to canvass every thing with accuracy, knowing 
that he must fully and perspicuously explain his understanding of each 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 679 

2. Disputation. — This exercise is now obsolete, in fact, through- 
out our British Universities, and has only a very partial and pre- 

several doctrine. In this fear, is found the strongest stimulus to the labour 
of learning ; without it, study subsides into a cold, sleepy, lifeless formality. 
What we have only heard or read, come to us like the shadows of a dream, 
and, like the shadows of a dream, depart ; but all that we elaborate for our- 
selves become part and parcel of our intellectual possessions. But this 
elaboration is forced upon us by examination ; examination, therefore, may 
be called the life of studies, without which reading, and even meditation, is 
dead. — Against prejudice and error, there is no surer antidote than examina- 
tion ; for by this the intellect is explored, its wants detected and supplied, 
its faults and failings corrected. — Examination, likewise, fosters facility of 
expression, counteracts perturbation and confusion, inures to coolness and 
promptitude of thought. — Not less useful is examination in restraining the 
course of juvenile study within legitimate boundaries. Nothing is more 
hurtful, as nothing is more common, than vague and tumultuary reading, 
which inflates with the persuasion, without conferring the reality, of erudi- 
tion. Wherefore, if examination brought no other advantage than that it 
counteracts the two greatest pests of education, found, indeed, usually com- 
bined, sloth, to wit, and arrogance; — for this reason alone should examina- 
tion be cherished in our Universities. Against sloth there is no goad sharper 
or more efficacious than examination ; and as to arrogance, examination is 
the very school of humility and improvement. By no other discipline is 
a soaring conceit so effectually taken down ; and this is the reason, why self- 
satisfied pretenders ever fly examination, whilst those who think less of the 
little that they know, than of the much that they know not, resort to it as 
the most efficacious mean of improvement." 

The subject of academical Examination is also treated well and at great 
length by a distinguished contemporary of Melanchthon, the Flemish theo- 
logian Hyperius, but with more especial reference to his professional depart- 
ment. See his Opuscula Theologica (1570), pp. 364-436. After these older 
authorities in favour of examinatioD, independently of its manifest utility, it 
may surprise us, that this exercise has, it may be roundly averred, been long- 
obsolete in the Protestant Universities of the Empire; for the " Examina- 
toria" occasionally and privately opened by individual professors, to such 
students as may choose to attend, are not worthy of being mentioned as 
exceptions. It is not, however, difficult to explain the want ; though Hol- 
land, and thereafter Germany, are the countries, where learning has long 
flourished most unexclusively in all its departments, and the Universities 
comprised the largest complement of the most learned men. For, in the 
first place, the excellence of their academical patronage, supplying the 
Universities with the highest quality of erudition, a course of professorial 
lectures afforded to the student instruction, better probably than the best 
publication upon the subject. These lectures, therefore, afforded what could 
not otherwise be so well obtained ; and though merely teaching, the Univer- 
sity was not superfluous, — as elsewhere.— But in the second place, what is 
of far more importance, there was, in general, no compulsion of attendance 
on any one academical course. In Germany, a professor had no monopoly 



680 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

carious existence in any other. Disputation is, however, in a 
certain sort, the condition of all improvement. In the mental as 
in the material world, action and reaction are ever in proportion ; 
and Plutarch well observes, that as motion would cease, were con- 
tention taken out of the physical universe, so all human progress 
would cease, were contention taken out of the moral. Academical 
disputation, in fact, requiring calls out, and calling out educates 
to, the most important intellectual virtues ; — to presence of mind, 
to dominion over our faculties, to promptitude of recollection and 
of thought, and withal, though animating emulation, to a perfect 
command of temper. It stimulates also to a more attentive and 
profounder study of the matters to be thus discussed ; it more 
deeply impresses the facts and doctrines taught upon the mind ; 
and, finally, what is of peculiar importance, and peculiarly accom- 
plished by rightly regulated disputation, it checks all tendency 
towards irrelevancy and disorder in statement, by astricting the dis- 
putants to a pertinent and precise and logically predetermined 

of subject ; he could lecture ou any brauch belouging to his faculty, though 
that had been previously selected by a colleague ; and the same could every 
other professor, ordinary or extraordinary, indeed any qualified graduate of 
the faculty, do by him : indeed no exclusive privilege was accorded to any 
course. In these circumstances, there being no compulsion on attendance, 
examination could not be enforced ; whilst, contemned by professors, and not 
desired by students, it naturally fell into desuetude. It was even opposed, 
and that on high authority, as contrary to academic liberty. — In the third 
place, it was less required in Germany than in other countries ; for, to say 
nothing of other causes, literary merit being there always secure of promo- 
tion, and no literary merit there taken upon trust, the result was, (in the 
words of a celebrated professor of Goettingen), that " the industry of the 
German students was so great, that it became more requisite to restrain 
them from over-work, than to excite them to a profitable employment of 
their time," &c. — (Meiners, kurze Darstellung - - d. Goettinyen, (1808), 
p. 36.) 

Still, the want of examination in the German Universities was felt by 
intelligent writers on the theory of education ; and beside the incidental 
testimonies in approval of the exercise, to be found in the treatises on aca- 
demical instruction by Fichte, Schleiermacher, Tittmann, and others, its 
restoration was in 1825 formally argued by the celebrated Professor Ekli- 
staedt of Jena, in two solemn addresses to the University, in his capacity of 
Programmatarius, or Public Orator, entitled — " De Examinibus in Acade- 
mias Revocandis." But Eichstaedt was not peculiarly qualified for the work ; 
and had he merely reprinted the Declamation of Melauchthon, of which, 
however, he was unaware, he would have done more towards the result for 
which he contended, than by his own eloquence in its commendation. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. G81 

order in the evolution of their reasonings. Accordingly, in the 
best of the older Universities, (as in Louvain,) nothing was taught 
by prelection in the fundamental faculty, which was not also gone 
over in the exercises of disputation and examination. * 

* The greatest contrast between the older education afforded in the Uni- 
versities and the more modern, is perhaps displayed in regard to the exercise 
of Disputation ; and, assuredly, the comparison is not in favour of the latter. 
— Before the invention of printing, Universities were useful, nay indispen- 
sable, as organs of publication and learned intercourse. They were compa- 
ratively few in number ; spoke one learned language ; professed a common 
faith ; the crowds whom they attracted from the most distant countries were 
immense ; and one academical teacher might then dispense to hundreds, it 
might be to thousands, the information of which, except in such a literary 
centre, they could hardly have become aware. Yet these same schools justly 
considered their function of prelection as in importance greatly inferior to 
their function of exercise ; and among the exercises which they sedulously 
inforced, that of disputation, regular and frequent, was the principal. With 
this, indeed, no other academical act was permitted to interfere. During 
the seasons of disputation all other instruction was suspended ; and every 
mean employed to secure an auditory the most numerous. — On the other 
hand, since the art of printing has totally superseded the Universities, as 
instruments of publication ; and since their indefinite multiplication in every 
country, the divisions of religion, the introduction of the vernacular, com- 
bined, in general, with exclusive privileges to individual chairs, and vicious 
systems of appointment to these chairs themselves, have reduced Universi- 
ties, from cosmopolite and catholic, to local and sectarian schools, schools 
likewise often monopolizing instruction, but with instructors comparatively 
inferior both in ability and learning : strange to say, the whole function of a 
University is now, for the most part, concentrated in the useless office of com- 
municating information ; that is, the academical teacher or professor reads 
to his auditors a course of lectures upon subjects which they, with far greater 
convenience, might study for themselves in books, — lectures, too, which were 
they ever printed, no one would probably ever dream of reading; whilst 
disputation, (if not every other exercise,) which public seminaries alone can 
realise, is utterly abandoned and even unknown. — Thus the Universities, of 
old, ably and faithfully discharged their higher and their lower duties ; whereas 
of late, they attempt, too frequently, only what is of least importance, and 
attempt this minor duty, only through inefficient means. — But could dispu- 
tation, the practical exercise of reasoning, be again restored, (of course, in the 
vernacular of the disputants, and perhaps less limited, than of old, to mere 
logical form,) I have no doubt that it would constitute an era in academical 
efficiency. Lord Bacon has indeed recommended this. For whilst testify- 
ing, that the practice of disputation renders the mind prompt and all-sided, 
he proposes the establishment of what he calls a College of Controversies. 
By such an institution would be obtained all the advantages of a Debating 
Society, but with others of the highest importance, which are hereby not 
supplied ; at the same time the serious disadvantages would be corrected, 



682 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

3. Repetition. — As the end of study, is not merely to compass 
the knowledge of facts, but in and from that knowledge to lay up 

which adhere to the practice of debate, when not under logical regulation and 
intelligent control. (In a professional education for the bar, an institute for 
practice, under a competent professor, in which all the steps of a legal pro- 
cess should, by the students themselves, be regularly gone through from first 
to last, and in concrete examples of every variety of action, — this would inure 
them to oral and written pleading before commencing practice, and compen- 
diously supply, what cannot now be obtained at all from books or lectures, 
and to obtain which, however inadequately, months and years are often spent 
in an attorney's or writer's office, — a knowledge of form.) 

As it is, indeed, and out of school, all profitable study is a silent disputa- 
tion — an intellectual gymnastic ; and the most improving books are precisely 
those which most excite the reader, — to understand the author, to supply what 
he has omitted, and to canvass his facts and reasonings. To read passively, 
to learn, — is, in reality, not to learn at all. In study, implicit faith, belief 
upon authority, is worse even than, for a time, erroneous speculation. To 
read profitably, we should read the authors, not most in unison with, but 
most adverse to, our opinions ; for whatever may be the case in the cure of 
bodies, enantiopathy and not homoeopathy, is the true medicine of minds. Ac- 
cordingly, such sciences and such authors, as present only unquestionable 
truths, determining a minimum of self- activity in the student, are in a rational 
education, subjectively, naught. Those sciences and authors, on the con- 
trary, as constrain the student to independent thought, are, whatever be their 
objective certainty, subjectively, educationally, best. — In this respect, no 
writer is to be compared with Aristotle. For while his doctrine is, on every 
point, pre-eminently worth the knowing, still it is never to be adequately 
known, without considerable effort. He condenses always the most mean- 
ing in the fewest words ; he omits whatever may by attention be supplied ; 
he can, in fact, only be rightly understood, or intelligently admired, by a 
reader, who is familiar with his writings as a whole, and rot unable to 
wrestle with the writer. Add to this, that the philosopher is an ancient ; 
and the ancient associations of thought and language are so different from 
the modern, that their study necessarily educates the mind to a liberal ex- 
pansion, in emancipating it from those fetters which the accidental custom of 
time and country would otherwise impose. — But what renders the study of 
Aristotle so peculiarly profitable for the more advanced student, renders the 
Aristotelic works no less improper as a primary exercise of thought: nor 
would it, in fact, be more absurd to inflict the food and exercise of Milo on 
the tyro athlete, than to introduce an unpractised thinker to philosophy, 
through the speculations of the Stagirite. An Alma Mater should consider, 
with the Apostle, that its alumni at first " have need of milk, and not of 
strong meat ; but that strong meat belongeth to them as are of perfect age, 
and exercised to discern both good and evil." 

Of authorities in commendation of this exercise there need be no end. I 
shall quote only one, but he one of the highest ; — the elder Scaliger. " Vivos 
says — ' We profit more by silent meditation than by dispute.' This is not 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 683 

materials for speculation ; so it is not the quantity read, but the 
degree of reading, which affords a profitable exercise to the 
student. Thus, it is far more improving to read one (good) book 
ten times, than to read ten (good) books once ; and " non multa 
sed multum," little perhaps, but accurate, has, from ancient times, 
obtained the authority of an axiom in education, from all who 
had any title to express an opinion on the subject. " He who 
lives everywhere is at home no where;" the friend of all is the 
friend of none ; nor is there, intellectually, a more contemptible 
character, than a Margites, " in omnibus aliquid, in toto nihil." 
And, as they are not the healthiest, who eat the most, but who di- 
gest the best ; so, a University, as an intellectual gymnasium, should 
consider, that its "mental dietetic" is tonic, not repletory, — 
that its function is not to surfeit, but to stimulate, curiosity, — not 
to pour in a maximum of information, but through its information, 
(be it much or little,) to draw forth a maximum of thought. He, 
therefore, who reads, — to remember, does well ; to understand, 
does better ; but to judge, does best. — Nor did the Universities 
of old repudiate the principle ; and the academical distinction of 
Lectio Cursoria and Lectio Stataria would, were it explained, 
show that, in them, theory and practice were in unison. * 

true. For, as from the collision of stones [light], so from the collision of 
minds truth, is struck out. I myself am an example. For often do I medi- 
tate alone, long, and intently ; but without an antagonist, — unless I fight, all 
is in vain. A master indeed excites us to higher activity [than a book] ; 
but an opponent, be it by his obstinacy, be it by his wisdom, is to me twice a 
master." The words of Vives show, in what limitation this illustrious thinker 
meant his doctrine to be understood. " But in the sciences of contemplation, 
for meditation and exercise, we have silent thought and a pondering of the 
counter reasons ; thus do we penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of a 
thing, than by dispute or altercation, which more frequently confuses than 
sharpens the judgment." Both are right, and both their recommendations 
should be conjoined. Vives proposes one sort of intellectual effort, for one 
sort of science ; Scaliger, too exclusively, perhaps, proposes another, for all 
sciences, and, from his own personality, for all men. For, sooth to say, the 
Prince of Verona in his pride, and pride of strength, was somewhat of the 
literary gladiator. His great work is, indeed, purely polemical : yet how 
many subtle thoughts and important truths, all admirably expressed, does 
not this, as indeed all the writings of that extraordinary genius, contain, 
amid a mass, it may be allowed, of now uninteresting matters ? 

* The older Universities, and particularly Louvain, constrained Repeti- 
tion (recapitulation, revisal) by statute. See, among others, Vernuloeus, 
p. 281 — Wyttenbach (Praef. ad Eel. Hist. p. xxix.) notices, that the.wisdom 



C84 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

Our modern, stand, however, in this respect signally contrasted 
with our ancient, schools. For if, in theory, all authorities be at 
one, in regard to the importance of this principle ; how few are 
now the Universities which carry it out fairly into practice? 
Nay, even in some of them, where it is not actually violated, 
the usage has been accidentally determined, — less by enlightened 
views, than by the convenience of their teachers. 

Independently, also, of its intrinsic importance, as a fundamental 
maxim of education, the principle acquires a relative importance, 
as a prophylactic against the pernicious influence of the world in 
afterlife. In this respect, more especially, holds good — "JNon 
scholae, sed vitae, discendum." For in the bustle of life, few are 
able to realise what they may deem the best ; and all of us are, 
more or less, seduced into the knowledge of a thousand things, 
tending only to amuse, tending only to distract and dissipate 
the mind. Superficiality (better expressed by the Greek 
TLoTiUTT^etyfitoavuny by the German Viehvisserey,) is, in the world, 
indeed, the order of the day. Ours is emphatically "the reading 
age;" and the many are now sure to accord their admiration, 
not to the scholar who really knows the best, but to the sciolist 
who apparently knows the most. To counteract this hapless 
tendency, there is nothing but a good education, — a sound erudi- 
tion ; but as these are now unfortunately, in this island especially, 
at a sorry pass, with all our information, so various and so vast, 
we stand, as individuals, intellectual dwarfs, in contrast to the 
giants — the ignorant, but thinking, giants of antiquity. " Cuncta 
nihilque sumus." (See p. 39.) 

4. Written Composition. — By this is understood an ordinary 
exercise in the course of academical instruction, and is either com- 
bined with, or apart from, oral examination. As an improving 
eifort, both of thought and its expression, writing has generally 

of our ancestors had destined vacations, not only for the health and recre- 
ation of student and professor, but principally "ad repetitionem instaura- 
tionemque studiorum. — Hszcferiata repetition ut per otium et minoreni festi- 
nationem facta, plurimum valet ad iuteriorem intelligentiam ; plurimum 
habet et voluptatis continua progressuum animadversione, et iucitanienti ad 
studii laborisque constantiam." — In Gcettingeu, and some other German 
Universities, there is an order of inferior academical instructors, whose com- 
petency is guaranteed by public appointment ; they are called Repetents, and 
go over with the students the professorial lectures. But there the profes- 
sorial lectures are worth that trouble ; and the Repetents supply in part, but 
only in part, the want of public examination, &c. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 685 

been commended. It is unnecessary, therefore, to dwell upon its 
uses. But to become fully and certainly profitable, it is astricted 
to conditions. — 1°. The writing should be more or less limited, 
that is, be in answer to questions, more or less articulate. The 
student should not be left to roam at large ; but be made to think 
precisely and pertinently, by confining him to certain definite 
points. — 2°. The composition should be strictly and intelligently 
criticised. 3°. It should be read, at least written with the hope 
of being read, before a large auditory ; and according to its 
merits, it should obtain immediate approbation, and co-operate 
towards ultimate honour. 

5. Teaching, in order to learn. — The older Universities, all of 
them, regarded the exercise of teaching as a necessary condition 
of a perfect knowledge ; in recent times, the Universities have, 
with equal unanimity, neglected this. Yet there can be no doubt, 
I think, of the superior wisdom of the more ancient practice. 
For teaching, like " the quality of mercy, is twice blessed ; it 
blesseth him that gives and him that takes." At present, we, of 
course, consider teaching, only in the former relation, — only as 
the instruction of others, is, itself, an instruction of ourselves. — 
We have already seen {Second end, p. 674), that no one can 
rightly teach, who is not fully cognisant of the matter to be 
taught. But on the other hand, the preparation for, and the 
very process of, instruction, react most beneficially on the know- 
ledge of the instructor, — if the instructor be what (intellec- 
tually and morally) he ought. If so : Teaching constrains 
him to a clear and distinct consciousness of his subject, in 
its several bearings, internal and external; it brings to his 
observation, any want or obscurity, lurking in his comprehension 
of it as a whole; and urges him to master any difficulty, the 
solution of which he may have previously adjourned. The neces- 
sity of answering the interrogations of others compels him, in 
fact, to interrogate and to answer himself. In short, what he 
had learned synthetically, he is now obliged, for the inverse pro- 
cess of instruction, to study analytically. But a combination of 
analysis and synthesis is the condition of a perfect knowledge, 
and as to a perfect knowledge, — 

" Quodque parum novit, nemo docere potest." 

This, however, as has been said, supposes, that he who prac- 
tises instruction, has the requisite talents and dispositions. If its 
conditions be not performed, what is called (but is not real) instruc- 



686 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

tion, is not an improving act, in either relation. It is, at best, a 
mechanical effort ; a mere pouring out of what had been pre- 
viously poured in. And yet, too many, even of our academical 
instructors, are no better. Professing to teach, teaching is for 
them no self-improving process ; and as to their pupils, — " lis 
siffleront de jeunes Perroquets, comme ils ont ete siffle eux-memes, 
lorsqu'ils apprirent a devenir Perroquets." 

Nor must it be supposed, that the older Universities, though 
enjoining, nay, even enforcing, the practice of instruction, as a 
mean of learning, abandoned the higher academical teaching to 
the prelusive efforts of these student-doctors. On this, the 
monostich of Dionysius Cato states their precept and their 
practice : — 

" Disce, sed a doctis ; indoctos ipse doceto."* 

* I have already (pp. 391, 447, 448) stated, how Universities as they 
arose and flourished, during the middle ages, made instruction, by the 
learner, a necessary exercise towards a more perfect learning. Every 
Bachelor, or incomplete graduate, was required, in order to qualify him for 
the higher degree, to teach certain books or subjects ; and every Master or 
Doctor was compelled by statute, and frequently on oath, to teach (regere, 
regere scholas,) for a certain period, which was commonly two years, imme- 
diately subsequent to graduation. During that period of compulsory pre- 
lection, he was said to be — necessarie regens ; thereafter, if he chose to exer- 
cise his right of lecturing publicly, or in the University, he was styled — 
regens ad placitum. Important academical privileges were, usually, accorded 
to the Regents; and to them was, more or less, entrusted the ordinary 
government of the University. In Oxford and Cambridge, the distinction 
of the two Academical Houses (the Congregation and Convocation of the 
former, the Regent and Non-Regent Houses of the latter,) is founded upon 
the distinction of regent and non-regent; the signification of these terms had, 
however, for at least a century and a half, been, in these venerable schools, 
confessedly forgotten. (P. 447.) But in the English Universities, though, 
by statute, entitled publicly to teach, and though still there actually a mem- 
ber of the legislative and ruling body ; the graduate would, if he now 
attempted to exert it, be probably denied his right of lecturing in " the 
Schools." — In the Universities of Germany, on the contrary, though the 
graduate has there lost his ancient power of academical government, he still 
retains his privilege of academical teaching ; for it is only requisite that he 
should farther write, and formally defend, what is called a " Dissertatio 
ad locum," to enable him to lecture in the University, on any subject within 
the compass of his faculty, and to have his course or courses announced in 
the public u Series PraBlectionum." The opportunity thus afforded to all 
graduates of publicly manifesting their learning and their ability, as teachers, 
is, with the admirable system of academical patronage, a main cause of the 
uniform excellence of the German Protestant Universities, as organs of 
information. — In other Universities, though the degree of Doctor or Master 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 687 

6. Conversation with, interrogation of, the learned. — This may 
be reduced to the head, either of exercise by the taught, or of 
instruction by the teacher. More properly, however, to the 

be, now as of old, the express conferring of a right academically to teach, 
this right is, however, de facto, now universally of no avail. 

During the middle ages then, this exercise was justly regarded as of the 
highest importance. The Pseudo-Boethius (De Disciplina Scholarum, c. 5, — 
probably Thomas Cantiprateusis, who, in the first half of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, gives a curious delineation of the academical usages of his time,) speaks 
of this exercise as follows : — " Tertio, quosdam habeat [studiosus adolescens,] 
queis secreta doceat librosque legat, aliisque rudimentis informet ; ut sic, 
intellecta sciat, scitaque exprimere discat, et expressione frequenti usum 
comparet. Usus magisterium propinat ; alios namque docere, est propria^ 
facultati indulgere." An account is then given of the modes by which an 
audience was secured. This one scholastic testimony must stand for all ; 
since there is no limit to the mediaeval authorities in commendation of the 
exercise. The following, however, are a few, which recur to me, of the 
many metrical forms, under which the precept became academically cur- 
rent : — 

" Condita tabescit, vulgata scientia crescit." 

" Discere si quasris doceas ; sic ipse doceris : 
Nam studio tali tibi proficis atque sodali." 

" Multa rogare ; rogata tenere ; retenta docere : 
Hsec tria discipulum faciunt superare magistrum." 

" Disce, doceque alios, sic tute doceberis ipse ; 
Atque tuae solito certior artis eris." 
In fine : — 

" Qui docet, is discit ; qui perdiscit, docet ille : 
Doctus ut evadas, suadeo — Disce, Doce." 
" Docendo discismus " has even subsided into an adage, not in Latin only. 
The Italian — " Insegnando s' impara," is an example. 

From a remote antiquity, however, all philosophic thinkers concurred in 
the same truth. " To teach," says Plato, " is the way in which we learn 
most and best." And while Plato may represent the Greeks, Seneca, 
enouncing — " Homines dum docent discunt," declares what he himself 
repeats, and what is frequently confirmed by the other philosophers of 
Home. — Again, Clement of Alexandria may stand a guarantee for the 
Christian fathers : — " The teacher adds to his learning, and is frequently a 
fellow disciple with those whom he instructs." — Finally, since the revival of 
letters the same unanimity of opinion is manifest. For passing over the 
exaggeration of those who, like Ringelberg, would elevate this exercise into 
a one exclusive mean of education, all authority acquiesces in the more tem- 
perate conclusion ofVives: — " Idcirco, nihil est ad magnam eruditionem 
perinde conducens, ut docere." And to terminate with the testimony of a 
learned Oxford praelector, logician, and divine ; Bishop Sanderson used to 
say : — " I have learned much from my master, more from my equals, but 
most of all from my disciples." 



688 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

former. For it supposes, both an extra activity of the student in 
a questioning of his instructor, and likewise an extra- information 
thereby drawn forth from the instructor, either in the shape of 
the special solution of an individual's difficulties, or of the special 
direction for an individual's pursuits. Nothing can be more useful 
in a course of study, than this privilege of interrogating those who 
are able to afford us satisfaction. Every one who, by his unaided 
efforts, has succeeded in conquering any department of knowledge 
out of the ordinary routine, knows, that he was arrested, often 
long, by difficulties which could at once have been removed by a 
master of the subject, either solving them himself, or directing to 
where their solution might be found. He knows, in short, that 
half his labour might have been profitably spared. " The ques- 
tioning of the wise," says the Arabian adage, " is the half of 
wisdom ; " and as the German proverb expresses it, — " Mit fragen 
wird mann weiss." " Multa rogare," &c, has been already 
quoted as an academical brocard. — (P. 687.) Accordingly, it has 
been the aim of every competent University, to supply the 
alumnus with such assistance. Hence the Conversatoria of the 
German schools; and in Oxford, when the education was still 
common, public, and legal, we have the following retained among 
the Caroline Statutes : — " Moreover, at the end of Lecture, the 
several Professors shall tarry for a time in the Schools : and if 
any scholar or hearer wish to argue against what they have 
advanced in lecturing, or may otherwise have any doubt, they 
shall listen to him with kindness, and satisfy the difficulties and 
questions proposed to them." — (T. iv., S. ii., § 4.) 

7. Social Study. — We are social animals. " Man is the sweetest 
thing to man;" he is happier in company; and in company his 
memory and understanding are more alert. He, therefore, often 
studies better, when he does not study alone. It is an apophthegm 
of Hebrew wisdom : — " Obtain for thyself a preceptor from whom 
thou may'st learn, and a companion with whom thou may'st 
study." It is, in fact, as conforming to this requisite of our 
human nature, that those Universities which compel their alumni 
to live in common, can best vindicate the utility of academical 
Houses ; for, in the community of a college life, the social condi- 
tions of study are most fully and certainly supplied. In a college, 
especially in a college not too small, each pupil may select a com- 
panionship of study, conformed to his wants, in numbers, age, 
ability, and pursuit, — a society, of which the members are able to 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 689 

assist and encourage each other, by a community of labour, and 
by a sympathy or fellowship in feeling, — " cvp<pi\ooo(puv, avp(pi\oko- 
ysh, Kotl awiu&ovaU^uvr Even Homer, after noticing the suggestive 
influence of man on man, observes, " That the lone thinker's 
thoughts come slight and slow." To him, indeed, we trace the 
origin of the Greek and Latin adage, — " Unus homo, nullus 
homo;" — a truth, which, propagated by Plato, Aristotle, and 
subsequent philosophers, had of old subsided into a common 
maxim of academical education. 

Sixth end. — A University is farther bound to grant Degrees to 
those of its alumni who have accomplished their academical course, 
testifying to a certain proficiency in their studies ; and to this 
end, it is also bound to have them tried, by competent, impartial, 
and conscientious Examiners. If, moreover, the candidates be 
placed, — 1°, in certain classes, according to their amount of learn- 
ing ; or 2°, arranged according to their superiority, in reference 
to each other ; or 3°, what is best, both these schemes of classifi- 
cation be combined: — in this case, a high or low rank in the 
classification will be regarded as an honour or a disgrace, and the 
Examination, especially if compulsory, and the candidates numer- 
ous, becomes a powerful, though not the one sufficient, mean of 
stimulating the activity of the student. 

Seventh end. — But beside the more arduous studies, which pre- 
pare for others, and more powerfully exercise the mind ; and 
beside the Instructors and Examiners competent to promote 
thinking, and to pitch high the standard of intellectual attain- 
ment : there is to be considered another class of sciences, with 
their teachers, — the Physical, to wit. These sciences, — easy and 
attractive in themselves, and, as commonly cultivated to some 
extent at least, it is even disgraceful not in some degree to know, — 
require for their profitable study, in private, the public exhibition 
of costly experiments, apparatus, and collected objects. This 
exhibition a University ought to supply ; and, at the same time, 
as a necessary concomitant, a competent monstrator. As amusing, 
popular, and facile in themselves, these sciences need no external 
stimulus; and as not the conditions of progress, either objective 
or subjective, it would be even an inversion of the prime purpose 
of a University, in its general faculty, to apply it. In these, all 
that a University can safely require, is a certain amount of pro- 
ficiency. Its honours, at least its higher honours, should be 
reserved as an encouragement to the more invigorating and fun- 

2 x 



690 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

damental studies ; but which, as less popular, and for a time more 
irksome, are, if not externally — if not peculiarly promoted, sure 
to be neglected. At the same time, there is always a consider- 
able number, a majority even of its alumni, incapable of progress 
in the higher departments, but whom it is not right in a univer- 
sity, as alma mater, altogether to neglect. To these, who would 
otherwise be left to idleness and its consequences, the physical 
sciences present an attractive and not an unimproving object of 
occupation. As Augustin says : — " Patiantur Aquilae dum pas- 
cuntur Columba3." The doves, however, should not be tended to 
the neglect of the eagles. To discover, and to recall to unity, 
in Physics as in Mathematics, require inventive ingenuity and 
general ability ; — though Bacon certainly asserts, in commendation 
of his method of discovery, that it actually "levels the aristocracy 
of genius." But, in either, merely to learn what has been already 
detected and detailed, calls out, in the student, the very feeblest 
effort of thought. Consequently, these studies tend the least to 
develope the understanding ; and even leave it, for aught that 
they thus effect, in a state of comparative weakness and barbarism. 
(See pp. 39-41, 267-313, 319 sq., 621* sq., 651* sq.) But as the 
many, not incognisant of this, have no conception even, of a 
higher cultivation, the Universities, if conformed to popular 
views, would be abased to the very lowest : 

a Fallitur et fallit, vulgi qui pendet ab ore."* 

* There is a sort of knowledge, both interesting in itself, and deserving 
even to be academically enforced, -which ought to be derived from books 
alone ; being peculiarly inappropriate for professorial instruction, indeed for 
any academical discipline. I mean every collection of results, which students, 
and even professors, take, and must take, only on report ; for these results 
are mere facts, to be passively believed, satisfying our curiosity at no expense 
of thought, and hardly even cultivating the memory. Yet such departments 
of knowledge, modern wisdom has, in some Universities, established, even as 
imperative courses. One sufficing example may be taken from Ethnology ; 
which, from the relation of languages, supplies us with information, anterior 
to all historic record, touching the migration of nations, and with the only 
certain basis, on which to divide and subdivide mankind, according to the 
affinity of race. This doctrine, most curious and important in itself, is, as a 
result to be taken upon trust, so limited, that it may be comprised in a brief 
book, — in fact, in a single table ; whereas, if intelligently known, that is in its 
grounds, it supposes an acquaintance with some ten, twenty, fifty — in truth, 
with above a hundred languages and dialects. Now, to institute a chair, for 
a professor to retail his second-hand opinions, is sufficiently foolish ; but the 
lectures would be equally inept for academical education, were the professor, 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT RE. GDI 

Eighth end. — But an University, besides its exhibitions for the 
sciences of nature, ought, moreover, to supply its alumni with a 
complement of books, selected in accommodation to their studies 
and reasonable wants, which are by no means unlimited, and with 
every convenience, which is easily afforded, for consultation and 
reading ; even though it do not accord to them the privilege of 
taking the works out, and, for a time, may deny them access to its 
more extensive libraries. 

Ninth end. — A University should likewise possess a competent 

instead of speaking on the authority of others, himself a Mezzofanti and a 
Grimm, in one;— himself cognisant of all the relations of all the languages 
on which he founds : for the pupils would still be only passive recipients of 
another's dicta, and their comparative philology, at least, would, at best, be 
the philology of parrots. 

" Dico ego, tu dicis, turn denique dicit et ille ; 
Dicta sed hasc toties, nil nisi dicta docent." 

Ethnology is thus misplaced, in being made a subject of academical dis- 
cipline. Objectively, an important knowledge, it remains, subjectively, an 
unimproving mechanism. How different in its effect is another philology ! 
For nothing can better exercise the mind, than a rational study, either of the 
grammar of a known language, or of universal grammar, illustrated by the 
languages with which a student is acquainted. Here every doctrine of the 
teacher may be elaborated by the taught. Yet this most valuable science, 
(an applied Logic and Psychology,) and most profitable exercise of mind, is 
wholly neglected in our Universities ; though, as I have said before, and I 
speak not without experience, to compass Sanctius and his commentators is 
a far more improving effort than to master the Principia of Newton. 

In this point of view, even History is not a proper subject of academical 
discipline, at least modern history, more especially in the vernacular, and 
apart from the active examination and pondering of authorities. For though 
of great importance in itself, mere historical reading does not necessarily 
call forth, exercise, and develope the higher powers of thought. Moreover, 
the field of history is too extensive ; and where, in a University, it is at all 
adequately taught, there is hardly a limit to the historical courses. In the 
German Universities, (and in their circumstances, I do not say improperly,) 
history is made an especial object of instruction ; and, counting, I found that 
in a single University, for a single semester, the historical courses announced 
in the " Verzeichniss" amounted, in all the faculties, to eighteen. In fact, if 
a mere academical course of historical lectures be compulsory, and not better 
than the best book upon the subject, it is not merely superfluous, — it is a 
nuisance. It is most proper, however, in a University to require for its 
Degree in Arts, a competent amount of historical reading, though it do not 
accord to such knowledge its higher honours ; and it should likewise desig- 
nate the most fitting books for its examination, to the attention of tha 
student. 



<5!J2 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

board of regulation and academical patronage. But the condi- 
tions of the competency of such a board are, — 1°, that it should 
be responsible, and fully conscious of its responsibility, (therefore, 
properly nominated, small, not transitory, not absolute, and 
sworn) ; 2°, intelligent and well informed ; and 3°, as far as pos- 
sible, with every motive for, and no motive against, the perform- 
ance of its duties. But on the problem, — how to obtain such a 
board ? I have already treated in detail. (See pp. 348-385.) 

Tenth end. — As a condition of the second, third, and ninth 
ends, it is requisite, that a University should be able to offer some 
not inadequate reward for the ability and learning required in its 
instructors. Ability and learning should hold their value in the 
academy as in the world ; for as Tacitus expresses it, — " Sublatis 
studiorum pretiis, studia ipsa peritura." 

It is not necessary, it is not, indeed, expedient, that the emolu- 
ment of an academic place should be uniform, by whomsoever 
filled. For thus, one individual would obtain comparatively more, 
another comparatively less, than he deserves, — Thersites, in a 
division of the booty, would share equally with Achilles. Each 
instructor should, therefore, as far as possible, receive only what 
he equitably merits, and what he is relatively worth, his emolu- 
ments, of course, rising with his reputation, and as he may 
approve himself of greater value to the institution ; for the evils 
are not less from raising mediocrity than from depressing excel- 
lence. This is the principle fairly and fully acted on in the Ger- 
man Universities. Heyne, the illustrious veteran, drew ten times 
the salary of Heyne, the promising junior, Professor ; and, 
though in these there be not any academical monopoly, no one is 
appointed to the difficult and important office of public instructor 
who has not publicly manifested his competence to instruct. In 
this island all is the reverse. We pamper ignorance, and starve 
learning. An income permanent, and nearly determinate, is con- 
nected with each academical place; to this place, comparative 
merit with no certainty regulates the appointment ; and the most 
lucrative places are, in general, those opened to the commonest 
qualifications. With us, Thersites obtains a far larger share of 
the booty than Achilles. 

The English Universities are called the wealthiest in Europe ; 
and so they are, — but not as educational establishments. No 
other Universities possess such mighty means ; but in none are the 
means so unprofitably expended, — expended, in fact, seldom in 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 693 

favour of learning and education, but frequently, nay generally, 
in counteraction. Of this deficiency Lord Bacon was well aware. 
For though, in his time, the University still educated, its chairs, 
or public readerships, were most inadequately remunerated; so 
that the world and the professions abstracted, then as now, the 
talent which found no appropriate recompense in either " seat of 
learning." Bacon has thrice solemnly addressed the Crown, and 
the Nation, on this want ; — in The Advancement of Learning, in 
the De Augmentis Scientiarum, and in the Advice about the 
Charterhouse. These testimonies are substantially the same ; 
and in the following extract (beside emending the quotations,) I 
have inserted from the second and third, what is not contained in 
the first, and somewhat condensed the whole. 

" And because founders of Colleges do plant, and founders of Lectures do 
water, it followeth well in order, to speak of the defect which is in public 
Lectures. Namely, in the smallness and meanness of the salary which in 
most places {especially among us,) is assigned unto them, whether they be 
lectures of [the liberal] Arts, or of Professions. It hath been my ancient 
opinion and observation, that in the Universities of this realm, which I take 
to be of the best endowed Universities of Europe, there is nothing, more want- 
ing towards the flourishing state of learning, than the honourable and plen- 
tiful salaries of such readers. For it is necessary to the progression of 
sciences that Headers be chosen of the most able and sufficient men ; as 
those which are ordained for the generating, and propagating for ever, of 
sciences, and not for transitory use. This cannot be, except their condition 
and endowment be such as may content the ablest man to appropriate his 
Avhole labour, and continue his whole age in that function ; and therefore 
must have a proportion answerable to that competency of advancement, 
which may be expected from the practice of a profession. So as, if you will 
have sciences flourish, you must observe David's military law, which was, — 
' That those which tamed with the baggage should have equal part with 
those which went down into the battle,' else will the baggage be ill attended. 
So, Readers in sciences are, indeed, the guardians of the stores and provi- 
sions of science, whence men in active courses are furnished, and therefore 
ought to have equal entertainment with them. For surely, Eeaders in the 
chair are as parents in the sciences, and deserve to enjoy a condition not 
inferior to their children that embrace the practical part ; else no man will 
sit longer in the chair than till he can walk to a better preferment : and if 
the father s*in sciences be of the weakest sort, or, through the meanness of their 
entertainment, be but men of superficial learning, it Avill come to pass as Vir- 
gil saith, — 

' Invalidique patrum referent jejunia gnati.'' " 
(Works, by Montagu, ii. 94 ; viii. 80 ; v. 380.) 

Eleventh end. — 

" Qua? sedes erit Emeritis? quae rura dabuntur 
Qua? noster Veteranus aret ? " 



694 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

It is evident, and therefore requires no argument, that, no less to 
secure the instruction and example of distinguished teachers, (the 
second and third ends,) than in justice to these teachers them- 
selves ; the academical Emeritus should be enabled to retire, when 
no longer competent to discharge his function, either adequately 
to the advantage of others, or suitably to his own strength. 

Twelfth end, and last. — A University should, if possible, afford 
to its alumni the means of living academically together ; for thus 
can the possibility of social study most effectually be realised. 
(See p. 688.) But this can seldom be, even partially, attempted ; 
and indeed, if certain conditions (besides the mere adequacy of 
accommodation to demand) be not fulfilled, the evil of such an 
arrangement may greatly outweigh the good. These conditions, 
to speak only of the more essential, are three. — In the first place, 
the enforcement of this regulation should not operate as an exclu- 
sion, or even as a tax. The students should be enabled to live as 
cheaply (and this without degradation), in the privileged Houses 
of a University, as they otherwise could in private lodgings ; and 
this supposes that the rates in all these Houses should be equitably 
regulated, and certain of them, at least, accommodated to the 
means of the poorer alumni. — In the second place, if the Univer- 
sity be not limited to a single religious sect, those dissenting from 
it should be able to select a House, in which their attendance on 
domestic worship shall not be felt as a violation of their religious 
principles. — In the third place, an effectual superintendence should 
be maintained in the several Houses ; every member should be 
himself constrained to propriety of conduct, and secured against 
any disturbance of his studious tranquillity by others. If this be 
not accomplished, Colleges and Halls become, in fact, academical 
nuisances, — they are not aids but impediments of study. — This 
concludes our second head of consideration. 

iii.) Comparison of the Means, now at work, especially in 
Oxford, and the Ends there actually effected, with the Ends 
which a University, as a school of liberal study, ought to accom- 
plish. 

In reference to the first end (p. 674) — that a University, in its 
fundamental faculty, and as the organ of a liberal education, 
should make a selection of the studies, not only good in them- 
selves, but useful as the prerequisite of others ; — this primary 
condition Oxford in part fulfils, in part does not now attempt. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 695 

• 
In the first place, as to the objects of the liberal and prepara- 
tory study afforded by this University, there is, I think, not one 
undeserving of preference, not one which ought to be omitted. 
But, 

In the second place, in these, though there be nothing to take 
away, there is not a little to restore ; for the Oxford curriculum 
now abandons both Philosophy itself and the philosophical treat- 
ment of what it professes to teach, — an abandonment in which it 
is opposed to its own ancient and still statutory constitution, to 
the actual practice of all other universities (Cambridge alone ex- 
cepted,) and to the opinion of every authority in education of the 
least account. Nor, indeed, can the present practice of the old 
English Universities, in this respect, afford the smallest counte- 
nance to the omission ; for Philosophy and philosophical teaching 
were in them necessarily surrendered, when the education supplied 
by the University was transferred to those who, as a body, were 
wholly inadequate to Philosophy and philosophical teaching. Is 
this denied? The denial is refuted by the history of the usurpa- 
tion ; nor has the proof ever been attempted, either in Oxford or 
in Cambridge, either publicly or privately, that the abandon- 
ment was made for any better reason, than that the sphere of 
instruction behoved to be conformed to the average capacity of 
the collegia! interest, which has latterly administered the whole 
necessary education of the Universities. Such a proof was impos- 
sible ; and if possible, would have been suicidal, — as philosophical. 
Aristotle, in his Exhortative, observes : — " If to philosophise be 
right, we must philosophise to realise the right ; if to philosophise 
be wrong, we must philosophise to manifest the wrong ; on any 
alternative, therefore, philosophise we must" (E/ ph (pi\ouQCpmkov^ 

tsov.) * " Philosophy is to be studied," says Clement of Alexandria, 

* The author of Hudibras (in his Reflections upon Reason) curiously 
coincides with the Stagirite in this : — " There is nothing that can pretend to 
judge of Reason [Philosophy] but itself: and, therefore, they who suppose 
that they can say aught against it, are forced (like jewellers, who beat true 
diamonds to powder to cut and polish false ones,) to make use of it against 
itself. But in this they cheat themselves as well as others. For if what 
they say against Reason, be without Reason, they deserve to be neglected ; 
and if with Reason, they disprove themselves. For they use it while they 
disclaim it ; and with as much contradiction, as if a man should tell me that 
he cannot speak." 



696 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

" were it even, that it may be scientifically despised;" and Aver- 
roes asserts, that " it belongs to the philosopher alone, to con- 
temn philosophy." — Accordingly, no demonstration of the kind 
has, in the English Universities, ever been essayed ; such, indeed, 
was never dreamt of; and the science of philosophy proper 
dropt naturally from the cycle of academical teaching, when 
found beyond the general competence of the academical teacher. 

Yet is Philosophy (the science of science — the theory of what 
we can know and think and do, in a word, — the knowledge of 
ourselves,) the object of liberal education, at once of paramount 
importance in itself, and the requisite condition of every other 
liberal science. If men are really to know aught else, the human 
faculties, by which alone this knowledge may be realised, must 
be studied for themselves, in their extent and in their limitations. 
To know, — we must understand our instrument of knowing. 
" Know thyself" is, in fact, a heavenly precept, in Christianity as 
in heathenism. And this knowledge can be compassed only by 
reflection, — only from within : " ISTe te qiisesieris extra." It tells 
us, at once, of our weakness and our worth ; it is the discipline 
both of humility and of hope. (See p. 595-602.) On the other 
hand, a knowledge, drawn too exclusively from without, is not 
only imperfect in itself, but makes its votaries fatalists, material- 
ists, pantheists — if they dare to think ; it is the dogmatism of 
despair. (See p. 298-303.) " Laudabilior," says Augustin, — 
" laudabilior est animus, cui nota est innrmitas propria, quam qui, 
ea non respecta, mcenia mundi, vias siderum, fundamenta terra- 
rum et fastigia coelorum, etiam cogniturus, scrutatur."* We can 

* This might stand a motto for the doctrine of the Conditioned. It is 
from the proem to the fourth book Be Trinitate. The scheme of pantheistic 
omniscience, so prevalent among the sequacious thinkers of the day, 

(" Raging from Reason, and on phantasms fed,' 1 ) 
would have found little favour with the religious and philosophic nescience 
of St Austin. Evolved from " the Nothing," " the All" of this theory, at 
the first exorcism of a rigorous interrogation, relapses into nothing ; — 

" Et redit in nihilum quod fuit ante nihil." 
Strauss, the Hegelian theologian, sees in Christianity only a my thus. Natu- 
rally : for his Hegelian " Idea," itself a myth, and confessedly finding itself 
in every thing, of course, finds in any thing a myth ; " Chinnera chimaeram 
parit."— I have never, in fact, met with a Hegelian (and I have known 
several of distinguished talents, both German and British,) who could 
answer three questions, without being driven to the confession, that they 
did not, as yet, fully comprehend the doctrine of their master, though believ- 
ing it to be all true. Expectants,— in fact •' rapists in philosophy!'! — 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. OUT 

know God only as we know ourselves. " Noverim me, noverim 
Te," is St Austin's prayer ; St Bernard : — " Principale, ad viden- 
dum Deum, est animus rationalis intuens seipsum;" and even 
Averroes : — " Nosce teipsum, et cognosces creatorem tuum." 

Nor is the omission of philosophy from an academical curriculum 
equivalent to an arrest on the philosophising activity of the student. 
This stupor, however deplorable in itself, might still be a minor 
evil ; for it is better, assuredly, to be without opinions, than to 
have them, not only speculatively untrue, but practically corrup- 
tive. Yet, even this paralysis, I say, is not accomplished. Right 
or wrong, a man must philosophise, for he philosophises as he 
thinks ; and the only effect, in the present day especially, of a 
University denying to its alumni the invigorating exercise of a 
right philosophy, is their abandonment, not only without precau- 
tion, but even prepared by debilitation, to the pernicious influence 
of a wrong ; — " Sine vindice praeda." And in what country has a 
philosophy ever gravitating, as theoretical towards materialism, 
as practical towards fatalism, been most peculiar and pervasive ? 

Again, — Philosophy, the thinking of thought, the recoil of mind 
upon itself, is the most improving of mental exercises, conducing, 
above all others, to evolve the highest and rarest of the intellec- 
tual powers. By this, the mind is not only trained to philosophy 
proper, but prepared, in general, for powerful, easy, and success- 
ful energy, in whatever department of knowledge it may more 
peculiarly apply itself.* But the want of this superior discipline 
is but too apparent in English literature, and especially in those 
very fields of erudition by preference cultivated in England. 

Hegel himself, not long before his death, made the following declaration : — 
"lam downcast about my Philosophy. For, of all my disciples, one only 
understands it; and he does not." (Blatter f. liter. Unterhalt. No. 351. 
Dec. 1831 ; et alibi.) The one disciple, I presume, was Gabler ; but did 
Hegel understand himself? I am told, that Hegelianism is making way 
at Oxford. This may be good or it may be bad : the doctrine is good to 
controvert ; it is bad to believe. 

* Kant and Ruhnkenius were early friends and fellow- collegians at Kcenigs- 
berg ; but the genius of each seemed then (as we learn from Wyttenbach) 
strongly to incline towards the studies in which the other afterwards reigned 
paramount. And truly, the best progynmastic of philosophy is the theory of 
language ; and how necessary is philosophy and the practice of speculation 
to any progress of account in the higher philology, Ruhnken has himself 
authoritatively declared in his " Elogium Hemsterhusii." Wyttenbach, 
Rnhnken's successor, great as a critical scholar, was hardly inferior as a 
philosophical critic. Sec, besides his own works, passim, his Life by Mahne. 



698 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

For example, and be it here spoken in all praise : no study 
has been more anxiously encouraged, and more sedulously pursued 
in England, than Classical Literature ; and among English scholars, 
two at least may, for natural talent, of a certain kind at least, be 
ranked among the most distinguished philologers of Europe. Yet, 
of English scholars as a class, both now and for generations past, 
the observation of Godfrey Hermann holds good : — " They read 
but do not think ; they would be philologers, and have not learnt 
to philosophise."* The philosophy of a philology is shown prima- 
rily in its grammars, and its grammars for the use of schools. 
But in this respect, England remained, till lately, nearly two cen- 
turies behind the rest of Christendom. If there were any prin- 
ciple in her pedagogical practice, " Gaudent sudoribus artes," 
must have been the rule ; and applied it was with a vengeance. 
The English schoolboy was treated like the Russian pack-horse ; 
the load in one pannier was balanced by a counter weight of stones 
in the other. Educationally, England for generations crept by the 
heavy waggon whilst other countries were flying by the rail. 
His Majesty George III. sent a collection of the English classical 
school books to Heyne ; and, among others, the Eton and West- 
minster grammars, Greek and Latin, astonished, as well they 
might, the great scholar and educationist. All the philological 
monstrosities, perversions, confusions, which in the manuals of 
other countries had been long thrown out, stood in these em- 
balmed. The unhappy tyro was initiated in Latin, through a 
Latin book ; while the ten declensions, the thirteen conjugations, 
which had been reduced to three and two by "Weller and Lancelot, 
still continued, among a mass of other abominations, to compli- 
cate, in this country alone, the elementary instruction of Greek. 

* The author of " Philosophical Arrangements" and of " Hermes" may 
be perhaps objected. " Exceptio probat regulam." Mr Harris had long 
left the University of Oxford, "where" (in the words of his son Lord 
Malmesbury), " he had passed the usual number of years as a gentleman 
commoner of Wadham College," before he began even to read Aristotle or 
to inquire into the Greek philosophy ; and he was led to the consideration of 
universal grammar by no book of the academical c} r cle, either then or since, 
but by the " Minerva" of Sanctius. That Mr Harris was a tardy student of 
philosophy, is shown, perhaps, in his want of self-reliance, in his prejudice 
in favour of authority — at least of ancient authority. But truth is not the 
property of the old or of the new ; u nondum occupata," it frequently belongs 
to neither. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 699 

Half a century, even after the judgment of Heyne, the old routine 
continued. But all has now been changed — except the cause : 
for the same inertion of original and independent thought is 
equally apparent. As formerly, from want of thinking, the old 
sufficed ; so now, from want of thinking, the new is borrowed. 
In fact, openly or occultly, honourably or dishonourably, the far 
greater part of the higher and lower philology published in this 
country is an importation, — especially from Germany : but so 
passive is the ignorance of our compilers, that they are often 
(though affecting, of course, opinions,) unaware even of what is 
best worthy of plagiarism or transplantation. 

Theology — Christian theology is, as a human science, a philo- 
logy and history applied by philosophy ; and the comparatively 
ineffectual character of our British theology has, for generations, 
in the case of England, mainly resulted from the deficiency of its 
philosophical element. The want of a philosophical training in 
the Anglican clergy, to be regretted at all times, may soon, 
indeed, become lamentably apparent, were they called on to resist 
an invasion, now so likely, of certain foreign philosophico-theolo- 
gical opinions. In fact, this is the invasion, and this the want of 
national preparation, for which, even at the present juncture, I 
should be most alarmed. On the Universities, which have ille- 
gally dropt philosophy and its training from their course of dis- 
cipline, will lie the responsibility of this singular and dangerous 
disarmature ; shared, indeed, with the Church and State, which 
have both passively and permissively looked on. 

In reference to the second end. (P. 674.) — A University, if it 
accomplish the purpose of its institution, is bound to supply com- 
petent and to exclude incompetent instructors. But this end, is it 
fulfilled by the agencies now dominant in Oxford ? 

To answer this question, we have only to look at the preceding 
Table (p. 654), for there we have exhibited in contrast, not diffe- 
rent Universities pursuing different studies, but the same Univer- 
sity distributing its instruction among many private Houses ; 
each House pursuing the same studies, but by different instruc- 
tors ; and at last, the comparative success of the several domestic 
instructions, after a four years' continuance, fairly tested and 
formally proclaimed by the University, through its public board 
of Examination. But that Table, while it does not show that 
instruction, even as afforded in the very highest Colleges, is of a 
degree and quality such as it might and should be ; clearly shows, 



700 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

however, that the instruction afforded in the lower Houses is such, 
as is discreditable for the University, the Church, the State, to 
have been ever tolerated ; were that instruction, even verbally, 
conformable to statute, and not, as it is, diametrically opposed 
both to the spirit and to the letter of academical law. 

Rejecting then the Halls, comparing, on this standard, only the 
Colleges, and judging not by years but by decades, we see that 
instruction in one College is less efficient than that in another ; 
and this to a degree, not lurking under any fractional difference, 
but obtruded on observation by an integral sinking of college 
below college to nearly twenty depths.* Nay, on the same standard, 
we find a similar declension manifested between the educations 



* I see in the late discussions concerning medical practice and medical 
statistics, that less than an eightieth part of the difference in success, which 
thus discriminates College from College, would prove far more than decisive 
of the comparative truth and falsehood of rival medical theories. It is 
admitted on all hands, that if Homoeopathy cure, even under one in four, 
more than Allopathy, it must at once triumphantly supersede its opponent. 
The whole question regards the reality of the difference ; which here may, 
there cannot, be disputed. But imagine ! — A series of eighty Hospitals, each 
confessedly losing, on the average, a fourth of the patients more than its 
antecedent ; and all fiercely defended. Defended by enstasis : — as realising, 
together, a single system of cure, and that the one best possible ! Defended 
by antiparastasis : — as, at any rate, the Hospitals have a vested right to cure 
or kill; and [though, in fact, their monopoly of treatment had originally 
been usurped through breach of trust,] that it would be the climax of injustice 
to deprive them and their governors of the profitable privilege to physic the 
lieges as they chose ! Yet what is this but the Oxford educational system and 
its defence ; substituting only minds for bodies, Houses for Hospitals, and a 
decrement by integers instead of a decrement b} r fractions ? — In one respect, 
indeed, this is soothing. It shows, however unsatisfactory be the present 
state of Medicine, that its theories, the most conflictivc, vary by a difference 
less, a hundred times, than the same practice of the same theory of Educa- 
tion varies even in the same seminary, but in different hands ; that nature, 
at least, is far stronger against the Doctor (whom we cannot correct), than 
against the Schoolmaster (whom we can.) In fact, Saul slaying his thou- 
sands, and David his ten thousands, is but a type of the inferiority of one 
Educational seminary — of one Oxford College to another. This, assuredly, 
is not consolatory ; but a correction of the evil is within our power. 

The Rev. Mr Sewell, Tutor of New College, and otherwise an able man. 
has of late gravely proposed, — to send out to the great towns of England 
tutorial missions, from the bodies thus so brightly illuminating Oxford : 
professedly, in order, that any change may bo averted from the system oi 
education which has wrought so admirably in that University, and, at the 
same time, to communicate the benefit of such system to the lieges at largo! 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 701 

afforded by the same college, during one decade and during 
another. (P. 662, sq.) 

The Table likewise shows, that if the two departments which 
the University professes, and which the Colleges and Tutors are, 
de facto, exclusively authorised, to teach, the whole collegial 
Tutors (49) have only, of their body, in L. H., about a half (26), 
in D. M., about a sixth (8), of the First Class. Consequently, if 
there be any connection between superior knowledge and superior 
tuition, Oxford now abandons, indifferently, the work of education 
to competent and incompetent hands ; and the mighty differences 
of result could not, therefore, but occur, unless competence and 
incompetence were throughout the Houses equally distributed, — 
which they fortunately are not. 

Such are the facts, unparalleled out of the old English Univer- 
sities, and evinced by the statistics of the Oxford Examination 
itself. And, however astonishing, with a knowledge of the 
circumstances, all is easy of explanation. Let us only recollect 
two things : In the first place, that instruction, as the most im- 
portant, is the most difficult, of arts ; and in the second, that 
Oxford, in violation of oath and statute, and apparently regarding 
education as a matter either of no importance or of no difficulty, 
now leaves" this function to be engrossed, at hazard, by a class of 
men, who, as a class, are wholly unequal to the office, — an office 
for which indeed they were never dreamt of even by their founders. 
For : — 1°, the actually authorised education of Oxford (to say 
nothing of Cambridge) is, de facto, monopolised by the Collegiate 
Fellows ; — 2°, the qualifications of an individual for Fellow of a 
College are, usually, quite distinct from his talent, learning, or 
capacity of teaching ; — 3°, out of these incompetent Fellows, the 
Tutors, if not self constituted, are nominated, in general, by an 
incompetent Head ; while 4°, out of the low average of these in- 
corporated Heads and Fellows, a few, by the favourable circum- 
stancesjrf their foundation and other accidents, rise to a variable 
pitch of educational proficiency. Thus unable rightly to teach, 
even what had been specially proposed, the Oxford Tutors are of 
course, in general, still less able to resolve the difficulties or to 
guide the reading of their pupils. Questions, all but elementary, 
must, indeed, naturally cease; for these would be found, com- 
monly, useless by the one party, and not convenient by the other. 
" Percontatorem fugito." Schleiermacher truly says, that the 
distance maintained by an academical teacher towards the taught, is 



702 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

usually in the ratio of his incompetence. (Gedanken, &c, p. 
66.) 

It is thus manifest, and on its own standard, that the academi- 
cal education of Oxford is now conducted by those inadequate to 
the function, even as lowered towards their level. — So much for 
the second end. 

In reference to the* third end. (P. 675). This (the proposing to 
the student, more especially in his instructors, patterns of high 
learning and ability,) — this end is not only unfulfilled by the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, it is even frequently reversed. 

Should the student not penetrate below the surface, — not find 
what duties have, heretofore, been violated, in suppression of the 
University instruction, by the University guardians ; still, he will 
have painfully obtruded on his view, the example of a flagrant 
disregard of learning in this " chosen seat of learning." Here he 
will see the education of himself and other alumni handed over by 
the public Alma Mater to the private and fortuitous nursery of a 
College ; and there he may find himself consigned to the tuition 
of an individual, not even of undetermined qualification, but who 
stands perennially pilloried by the University itself, marked as 
of slender acquirements in knowledge, and, therefore, as incompe- 
tent to teach. He thus makes, by times, the untoward discovery, 
that literary merit is of very minor account, even in our most 
venerable seminaries ; and this, if there be aught in him worth the 
cultivating, ends, in a contempt of the teacher, or in a disgust 
at what is taught, or in a self-satisfied contentment with his own 
humble attainments. The only hope for him is to see through the 
corruption — to place himself above the seminary — to rely upon 
himself. All this is the converse of what a University ought to 
strive after. For it should be above its alumni ; a school, not of 
vanity and sloth, but of humility and exertion ; and the tyro 
should there be made to mete himself, not with Thersites, cer- 
tainly, but, if possible, with Achilles — (See, as previously referred 
to, p. 362, sq.) 

In reference to the fourth end. (P. 675.) — In determining 
strenuous study, through the excitement of honour and emulation, 
this school accomplishes much less than, with its means, might 
easily be done ; although in this respect, and compared with many 
other universities, Oxford is not undeserving of encomium. To 
this end, the effect of domestic education is small ; that of the 
University Examination, considerable. — Of these in their order. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 703 

It is evident, without descending to the fact, that there can be 
little or no emulation among students, as divided among the houses, 
and subdivided among the Tutors ; for the conditions of emula- 
tion, — numbers, equality, publicity, — are all awanting. In truth, 
competition, in such circumstances, instead of honour, receives 
only derision. So much indeed is virtually confessed by Bishop 
Coplestone.* " The heaviness of solitary reading is relieved by 
the number which compose a class : this number varies from three 
or four to ten or twelve : a sort of emulation is awakened in the 
pupil," &c. In the circumstances of his reply, more perhaps could 
not have been admitted ; and, in point of fact, emulation in the 
collegio-tutorial discipline of Oxford may be practically thrown 
out of account. 

The only excitement of study, through the desire of honour, 
worthy of account in Oxford, is that resulting from the Examina- 
tion for a degree of A.B., and the classifying of candidates there- 
with connected. And this, in so far as it extends, is beneficial ; 
but its influence is limited. In the first place, the influence does 
not operate in full effect throughout the curriculum of academical 
study. It acts weakly and irregularly at first, and only acquires 
continuity and strength as the academical course draws to a con- 
clusion. In the second place, the influence does not operate on all. 
It determines no application in the many who are not to graduate. 
It determines also no application in those, neither few nor feeble, 
who are, or deem themselves, from any cause (as want of per se- 
verance, want of nerve, the distraction of favourite pursuits, &c.,) 
unable to attain a higher honour, and have no ambition, perhaps 
a positive dread, to be commemorated for a lower. On these the 
classification, if it have any effect, acts only for evil ; as it con- 
strains the candidate to limit the books, which he studies and 
gives up, to such a minimum, as may not risk his being honoured 
and recorded. It is a great improvement in the new Statute, that 
this positive evil of the present Examination is therein obviated ; 
for the names of all who pass are henceforth to be published, be 
they honoured or not. 

In reference to the fifth end. (P. 677.) — This end is the elicit- 

* A Reply to the Calumnies, &c, p. 146. — I may notice, that what Dr 
Coplestone in the context, says of tutorial instruction, is rather a statement 
of its possible virtues, — which in his own tuition, I have no doubt, were 
realized, — than of its actual qualities, as manifested by the immense majority 
of the Tutors. 



704 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

ing in the student the fullest and most unexclusive energy of 
thought : 1°, by presenting to him the most suitable objects of 
study ; and 2°, by teaching these through the most suitable 
exercises. — Of these in detail. 

As to the objects : — The more arduous studies, those which, 
requiring, draw forth the highest and most improving activity of 
mind, — Philosophy proper, (the thinking of thought, the science 
of what can and can not be known,) and a philosophic treatment 
of the sciences in general ; — these, as a matter of necessity, must 
be excluded from an education monopolised by an interest, like 
the collegial of Oxford, constituted, not by ability and acquire- 
ment, and teaching, not for the benefit of the taught, but for the 
profit of the teacher. For an instruction, in objects, methods, 
means, can never possibly transcend the average level of the 
instructors. The honour of the University, and the advantage of 
its alumni, are here, therefore, now subordinated to the capacity 
of those, who were rarely incorporated for any capacity of aca- 
demical teaching, though usurping exclusively the office ; while 
what is the comparative height and depth of their actual capacity 
for that office, and on an Oxford standard, the Table shows. 
Instead, therefore, of the studies fostered in Oxford being those 
which demand a higher capacity, and elicit any maximum of 
thought, it was requisite to prefer such as could be best reduced 
to an inferior level, to mechanism and routine. And though 
impossible for a University to exclude all philosophical authors 
from the academical cycle ; yet philosophy was taught not as food 
for speculation, but in the dicta of these authors as peremptory and 
decisive ; whilst the student's knowledge was guaged, not by his 
systematic comprehension of a work in its totality, parts and rela- 
tions, but only by the accuracy (and that is not to be contemned) 
with which he might have committed to memory the very terms 
of its definitions, in the very language of its writer. 

As to the exercises; their existence and utility were of course 
regulated by the capabilities of the exerciser. 

Examination (p. 678) limited to the petty numbers of the pupils, 
and by the ability and knowledge of the Tutor, was too frequently, 
if it took place at all, a perfunctory, occasional, and useless form. 

Disputation (p. 679) long obsolete, was, except as a dead for- 
mality, in Oxford totally forgotten. 

Repetition (p. 682) is the exercise which has been most success- 
fully practised in Oxford ; this, indeed, the examination for a 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 705 

degree made necessary. Herein there is every thing to praise ; 
and had the study been needs as intelligent as sedulous, and 
directed as much to understand as to remember, there would 
have been almost nothing left even to desire. 

Written Composition. (P. 684.) Not one of the conditions of 
this exercise are in Oxford collegially fulfilled, — except in small 

measure, and by unusual accident The student is not compelled 

to think for himself, by being limited to definite parts of a definite 
subject ; but, if the form of a written composition be occasionally 
required, he is left to satisfy the demand by any production, how- 
ever vaguely pertinent, and therefore, perhaps, not even his own. 
— There is no one bound, no one probably inclined, if, indeed, any 
one competent, to criticism. — Finally, there is no numerous 
audience to listen ; and so far from any stimulus to exertion, a 
painstaking writer would by his fellows be only derided as a 
painstaking dunce. 

Teaching, in order to learn. (P. 685.) — This is not now in 
Oxford, indeed not now in any of our present Universities, em- 
ployed as an improving exercise in the course of learning. But, 
in Oxford, as the Tutors are generally neither old in years, nor 
few in numbers ; therefore, if individually well selected, and their 
tuition such as to necessitate an all-sided instruction of themselves, 
the tutorial system might justly claim, as a reflex mean of erudi- 
tion, some peculiar advantages. But, alas ! a Tutor's appointment 
and teaching are so much mere matters of routine, that little or 
no profit can accrue to himself from the exercise of his function. 
Instruction has been too long and too generally, in Oxford, as else- 
where, the " sifflement des Perroquets ;" nor, unless the doctrine 
of Aristotle in regard to teaching and knowledge (p. 674) be 
egregiously wrong, can the modern discipline of that University 
make (as a system) pretension to respect, or even toleration ? 

Conversation ivith, interrogation of, the learned, (p. 687,) is an 
exercise to be at once discounted ; for no one will hold, that an 
Oxford Fellow-Tutor is now, ex officio, to be presumed, either 
wise himself, or a fountain of wisdom to inquiring pupils.* 

* The following note should have been appended to the quotation (p. 688) 
from the Caroline Statutes :— This regulation, as to a questioning of the 
Professor, is an inheritance devolving from the middle ages— the mere repe- 
tition of an ancient statute. It is found, almost in the same words, as a law, 
in the Italian and Spanish Universities, and throughout the Colleges in every 
Catholic country belonging to the Society of Jesus. In like manner, the 

2 Y* 



706 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

Social Study (p. 688) is an exercise which, as it can be best 
realized in the community of an academical House, affords an 
advantage more than compensating for certain disadvantages 
which frequently result from such an arrangement. In this view, 
therefore, I think, that the Colleges are, and that the Halls might 
be, profitable institutions ; — but the best as now existing, are 
capable of great improvement. 

In reference to the sixth end (p. 689), — the grant of a Degree 
or authentic certificate of proficiency. To say nothing of their 
personal and professional character, and judging only from the 
mode of their appointment, and the sacred obligation under which 
they must ever consciously act ; I should confidently rely on the 
moral rectitude of the Oxford Examiners. This, indeed, I have 
never heard called in question, either as regards the Oxford or 
the Cambridge Masters ; and, in this fundamental condition of the 
value of a degree and relative classification, these Universities 
stand in honourable contrast to most others. — As to the compe- 
tence of the Examiners, in reference to the objects of examination, 
the same is true. But these objects, like the objects of instruc- 
tion, I must hold to be inadequate, in as much as they do not 
comprise Philosophy and sundry of the philosophical sciences. 
(See p. 695, sq.) — In another respect, I think that a far more 
definite line should have been drawn between the higher honours, 
which in the new Examination Statute are attached to the depart- 
ments necessary for a degree, and the lower, there assigned to 
branches of study left optional to the candidate. For a class of 
honour in any one department is ostensibly the same as a class of 
honour in any other. — Nor can I think, that more might not be 
done to evince the comparative proficiency of individuals. For 
though no one should reach a third, second, or first class, without 
a definite amount of learning ; still the several candidates within 
that class might be easily subordinated by comparative merit, and 
not left to the tumultuary grouping of an alphabetical arrange- 
ment. — But of this again. 

In reference to the seventh end, (p 689), the public Exhibitions 
necessary for the study of the Physical sciences. On the present 
state of Oxford in this respect I am hardly qualified to speak. 

German Protestant Universities, in general, secure, by public authority, this 
privilege of interrogating the academical instructor ;— I remember the fact, 
in reference to Goettingen, Erlangen, Greifswalde, Marburg, &c. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 707 

As to the mode of instruction in these sciences, I shall have 
occasion to say somewhat in the sequel. 

In reference to the eighth end, (p. 691,) — the supply of the 
students with a complement of Books suited to their scientific 
wants,— Oxford, publicly or privately, has done nothing. The 
libraries of the several colleges are, I believe, (like the Bodleian 
and Padcliffe,) still closed against the undergraduate ; nor 
indeed have the Houses, in general, such selections of books as 
would be rightly useful to him in the guidance and promotion of 
his studies. 

In reference to the ninth end, (p. 691,) — a responsible and com- 
petent board of Regulation and Patronage, — Oxford has none. 
The need of it is shown by centuries of illegality and abasement. 

In reference to the tenth end, (p. 691,) — the adequate Remunera- 
tion of the university Teachers ; — as university teaching is now 
virtually extinct in Oxford, there can be no question about its 
adequate remuneration. Indeed, the conjoined facts, — the 
ancient deficiency of this recompense, — its independence on the 
exertion of the incumbent, and his consequent tendency to do 
nothing, — the vicious modes of nominating professors, the nomina- 
tion, therefore, of incompetent prselectors, — the disinclination of 
the new rulers of the University, the Heads of Houses, to do ought 
to raise the public instruction, which they were sworn to improve, 
— in fine, even their active co-operation towards its actual ex- 
tinction; these conjoined facts soon had their natural — their 
necessary result. The public or academical education was nulli- 
fied, if not formally annulled ; the private or domestic silently 
succeeded to its place ; and the Fellow who rarely obtained his 
appointment in College from literary merit, superseded the Pro- 
fessor, who ought in the University, to have been elected to his 
chair for that alone, — but who, at last, had become so contemptible, 
that, except when an endowment could be converted into a sine- 
cure, was, without reclamation, not even nominally elected at all. 
Most of the public prselectorships or academical chairs, thus have, 
and have long had, an existence only in the Statute-book. (See 
pp. 422-426, 445-447.) 

In reference to the eleventh end, (p. 692,) — a Provision for 
academical Emeriti, — with this, it is almost needless to say, that 
Oxford is wholly unprovided. 

In regard to the twelfth and last end, (p. 692,) — the accommo- 
dation of the academical members in Academical Houses (Halls or 



708 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

Colleges,) — Oxford supplies this, but not under all the three con- 
ditions to their full extent. The first is not adequately fulfilled. 
The second does not at present emerge. The third is fairly per- 
formed. 

I have, in these previous observations, been compelled — com- 
pelled in the interest of truth — to show, in various respects, that 
the education now afforded in the University of Oxford, is not 
such as it ought to be. But though no attentive reader can sup- 
pose, from my strictures upon this, that I am, by preference, an 
admirer of any other British University : still I think it proper 
explicitly to state, — that I regard our British Universities, as, 
though in different ways, all lamentably imperfect ; and while 
none, in my opinion, accomplishes what, under right regulation it 
might, I should yet be mortified to have it thought, that I could 
institute a comparison where there is no medium, far less dis- 
parage one inadequate instrument to the praise of any other. 
Oxford is here only collated with Oxford ; and for aught that I 
have said, however imperfect may be the education of that Uni- 
versity as tested by its own standard, I might still, without at 
least self-contradiction, hold that the discipline of Oxford consti- 
tutes, in so far as it goes, the very best academical discipline in 
the British empire. In point of fact, with the present unfortunate 
organisations of professorial appointment, I hardly think that the 
Professors of the British Universities would, as a body, show a 
higher average than the Oxford Tutors, if we had their relative 
capacity meted by a standard like the Oxford Examination. 
They are, pro tanto, in general, unknown quantities. 

I now proceed to the last head of distribution. 

iv.) Suggestion of such Changes as may most easily be made, to 
render the University of Oxford a more efficient instrument for 
the purpose of general and preparatory education. 

As already premised, I do not mean to hazard the suggestion 
of measures which would here realise any ideal of a perfect Uni- 
versity. I propose only easy and manifest remedies for evils 
intolerable even to ordinary reason. It is self-evident, that if 
Fellowships, Headships, &c, were made the just rewards of aca- 
demical merit, these offices, themselves enhanced indefinitely in 
estimation, would constitute an apparatus of powerful agencies, 
which, as they have hitherto impeded, would now be turned to 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 709 

promote, the ends of the University ; and Oxford, raised from her 
present humble and ambiguous condition, would henceforward 
stand proudly forth as the most efficient mean, perhaps, of educa- 
tion in the world. But this, however I may wish, I would not 
venture to propose. 

A University only exists, as it executes the functions of its 
existence ; education is the one sole function for which it was 
created : as an organ of education, the University of Oxford (and 
what is true of Oxford is true of Cambridge) has been long sus- 
pended ; its existence, therefore, is in abeyance. The statutory 
education being suppressed in the public University, a precarious 
education has been attempted in the four-and-twenty private but 
privileged Houses ; while these, unconnected with the University 
and with each other as seminaries of instruction, are merely a local 
aggregation of so many private and irresponsible schools, their 
only academical correlation being, that they all send up their 
pupils, as candidates for a degree, to be examined by the central 
board appointed by the University. This public examination, as 
we have seen, shows, of itself, that these twenty-four Houses are, 
in general, most inefficient private schools ; one sinking below 
another to such a depth, that the lowest of the twenty-four is 
almost twenty-four times lower than the highest. 

The Houses and their Heads have contrived, however, to 
swamp the University. Have they elevated themselves ? But in 
restoring the public reality of education against the private and 
usurping semblance — in restoring the University against the Col- 
leges ; we ought not to imitate the precedent of the Houses, we 
ought not to swamp them. Our policy ought, in fact, to be 
directly the converse. " To Reform, not to Rescind," should be 
the maxim. Restoring the University, we should not supersede 
the Colleges ; but, on the contrary, enable the best to do far 
more than they can now accomplish, and compel the worst to 
become the rivals of the best. Let our reform be that of Bacon, 
— without bravery, or scandal, or assentation, either of old 
or new ; and taking counsel of every time, if our changes be 
rational, let us not be startled should they be compulsory. They 
ought, however, to be gradual ; beneficial to the public, but not 
unjust to individuals : announced, long enough before they are 
carried into execution ; and no duty suddenly required of any to 
which he is not bound to be competent. Our procedure should 
be the same in our seminaries of either kind ; in both we should 



710 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

prefer ingrafting to extirpation, — were it only for parsimony of 
time. For thus, as, in our gardens, the idlest stock may by a pru- 
dent treatment soon rise into a fruitful tree ; so, in our Universities, 
the least effective College may by a judicious introduction of new 
measures spring at once to unexpected usefulness and honour : 

— " Nee longum tempus, et ingens 
Exiit ad caelum ramis felicibus arbos, 
Miraturqne novas frondes et non sua poma." 

In the ensuing observations, I shall consider : — a) Things pri- 
mary or constitutive ; b) Things secondary or complemental. 

a.) Things primary or constitutive. Under this head the dis- 
cussion divides itself into five parts, in as much as it regards : — 
1. The Objects of instruction ; 2. The Instructors or kind of per- 
sons privileged to teach ; 3. The Instruction and its modes ; 4. 
The Excitement to study ; 5. The Degree or certificate of pro- 
ficiency. 

1. The Objects of instruction. (Pp. 674 and 694 sq. ; 677, 
sq. and 703 sq.) 

From what has been previously said it is apparent, that, in my 
opinion, there is much good, and not a little deficient, in the 
object-matter of the Oxford education. 

In the first place, I hold, that the study, there pursued, of phi- 
lology, and in general of classical antiquity, is of the highest uti- 
lity; both (objectively) as supplying the prerequisites of ulterior 
knowledge, and (subjectively) as a discipline of mind. In relation 
to the former, I have above, (pp. 329-340,) endeavoured to show. 
that classical studies are of the utmost importance to the liberal 
professions, more especially to Theology ; and in reference to the 
latter, I would only object, that, as too mechanically taught, in 
Oxford, these studies do not become the mean of sufficiently 
awakening the learner to a vigorous self activity. In a word, the 
philological teaching is there not philosophical enough. Even the 
higher grammar, a science most important in itself, and com- 
prising problems of the most interesting and profitable discussion, 
is, educationally at least, wholly neglected ; the philology, the 
object, of tuition in the College, and of examination in the schools, 
rarely rising above an empirical knowledge of the phraseology of 
this or that classical author. 

But in the second place, this omission of philosophical grammar 
from the cycle of university studies, is only part and parcel of 
the omission of philosophy itself along with the more central <>1 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 711 

the philosophical sciences. On this unhappy omission, academi- 
cally unexampled out of England, in violation even of English 
academical statute, and contrary to all opinions, — universally the 
most respectable, and specially the most respected in Oxford, I 
have already spoken, and may hereafter have occasion to speak. 
As noticed, Philosophy, in Oxford, as in Cambridge, was only left 
untaught, when the ordinary instructor had become incapable of 
teaching it. The raising of the teacher in these schools is, there- 
fore, a prerequisite to the restoration of philosophy. And of that, 
anon. 

2. The Instructors, or persons privileged to teach. (Pp. 674 
and 699 sq. ; 675 and 702.) 

Speaking only of the fundamental faculty, — there are two 
kinds of Instructors to whom Universities confide the performance 
of their essential duty — the business of education. These we may 
call Professors and Tutors ; although the distinction in function 
may not, especially in former ages, and in foreign countries, cor- 
respond always to the distinction in name. By Professor, I mean 
a teacher, exclusively privileged, to deliver from his own resources 
and at his own discretion, a course of lectures, on a certain depart- 
ment of knowledge, to the whole academical alumni. By Tutor, 
I mean a teacher, among others, privileged to see that his pecu- 
liar pupils (a section of the academical alumni) read and under- 
stand certain books — certain texts, codes, departments of doc- 
trine, authorized by the University. Tutors are now, de facto 
at least, the only necessary instructors in Oxford and Cambridge ; 
Professors alone are known in the other British, as in all foreign, 
Universities. 

Instruction by Tutors, and instruction by Professors, have, seve- 
rally, peculiar advantages ; there are certain conditions which each 
system specially supposes ; and this or that Tutorial, this or that 
Professorial, application will be good or bad, as the conditions 
of the special s v stem are or are not fulfilled in it. Comparing 
these together in themselves, that is, all else being supposed 
equal : — 

The peculiar advantage of the Professorial instruction is, — that 
requiring a small complement of teachers, these may individually 
all be of a higher learning and ability ; and consequently in so 
far as higher individual learning and ability afford a superior 
instruction, the Professorial system, if properly organized, is pre- 
ferable to the Tutorial, even at the best. But in so far as the 



712 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

efficiency of an education depends on the greater number of its 
teachers ; or, in so far as the condition of higher learning and 
ability is not adequately supplied, the Professorial system is infe- 
rior to the Tutorial, as the Tutorial ought to be. But as each, if 
properly organized and applied, has thus its several utilities ; we 
shall find, that as practically realized in this kingdom, the con- 
ditions of neither have been fulfilled. 

Professorial System. — The fundamental condition of this scheme 
is the superior qualification, — learning, ability, and didactic skill, 
— of the Professor. But how greatly this condition has been 
neglected, is shewn in the wretched modes of academical appoint- 
ment prevalent in this country. (See pp. 371-385.) 

Tutorial System. — There are three conditions of the efficiency 
of this scheme: 1°, misapplication of the Tutorial number's; 
2°, The competency of the individual Tutors; 3°, The sufficiency of 
the academically authorised boohs. 

As to the first condition, and looking merely to Oxford, no 
attempt has been made to draw the Tutors from their isolation in 
the private houses, and to employ them, in larger or smaller plu- 
ralities, in exercising the academical alumni, collected into Uni- 
versity or public classes. And yet, the greatest and most distinctive 
mean of Tutorial efficiency has thus, in the English Unversities, 
remained unapplied. With a staff of very incompetent Tutors, 
this measure could not, indeed, be accomplished. It could not 
even be attempted. But the necessity of its appliance would forth- 
with determine an elevation of Tutorial qualification. Those who 
had deemed themselves, and had been deemed by others, not 
incompetent for the function, so long us tuition lurked a torpid 
routine in the privacy of a college, would no longer appear even 
tolerable, so soon as their inferiority was brought into public, 
and into public comparison with the superiority of others. A 
beneficial competition would thus be determined between the 
instructors ; all would endeavour to excel, and none be content 
to remain very far inferior. The necessity of taking measures 
for the better appointment of Tutors would soon follow, if this 
improvement had not indeed preceded ; and the students (besides 
the other benefits of such a class) would thus enjoy the triple 
advantage, — of being variously exercised by a competent number 
of competent instructors, — of hearing the same object considered 
by different intellects in different views, — and of having placed 
before them the highest academical examples of erudition and 



XFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 713 

ability. Bat such an organisation of public classes under appointed 
Tutors, for the daily exercise of the students in general in their 
common studies, — this, as I said, has never been attempted in 
either of the only two Universities in which the Tutorial system 
has prevailed ; and yet this application is the very mean through 
which that system can realise its chief advantages. For a plu- 
rality of Tutors can do what can be done by no individual Pro- 
fessor. 

As to the second condition, — the competency of the several 
Tutors, — this has not only not been fulfilled ; but on the contrary, 
(as repeatedly observed,) the Tutorial office has been abandoned 
by the University to the private incorporations, the members of 
w r hich are, in general, neither Collegia! Heads nor Collegial Fellows, 
from any literary merit. It is certainly true, that the University 
is not so totally dependent on individual competence in the 
teacher, where the Tutorial system prevails, as where the Pro- 
fessorial. Still, however, it is dependent in a great degree ; and 
the memorable and melancholy consequences of the neglect, in 
Oxford, of the Tutors' competency are more than sufficient to 
manifest the clamant urgency for a prompt and fundamental 
reformation of the abuse. (See pp. 653, sq.) One prospective 
measure, corrective at least of the evil in the mass, presents itself 
obtrusively. By statute, the condition of becoming Tutor is not 
a Fellowship but a Degree, (P. 396, &c.) The monopoly of 
privileged Tutorial, that is, now of academical, instruction by the 
members of the private incorporations, is an illegal usurpation. 
I would, therefore, suggest, that no one should, henceforth, be 
eligible for this office, (which by the proceedings of the Heads of 
Houses themselves, has long been privileged and public,) who 
has not graduated with First Class Honours ; and that he should 
only be competent to act, at least as University Tutor, in that 
department wherein he shall have so graduated. I am, of course, 
aware, that some first class men may turn out comparatively 
poor instructors ; and that some laudable instructors may stand 
comparatively low in the Examination. But still, these are the 
exceptions. And although it might be proper to have a mean of 
conferring tutorial eligibility for special reasons, still it cannot 
but be advantageous, to lay down a highest academical honour as 
the general condition of becoming Tutor. This would at once 
abolish the present unparalleled system of abuse ; which, com- 
paring the educational establishments of Oxford only with them- 



714 APPENDIX TIL EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

selves, allows one House to sink below another to some ten or 
twenty depths. — But as it is of consequence, that the several Tutors 
should be connected with individual Houses, it being of import- 
ance that College should rival College for the honours of the 
University ; and as there is, at present, no other authority to 
which this patronage could be safely confided : I am not prepared 
to say, that the appointment of Tutor should be withdrawn from 
the Collegial Head. — At the same time, in the smaller Colleges, it 
might be advantageous, if two at least combined, and had in com- 
mon a single complement of Tutors. — Could not government be 
induced, to make a laudable exception of its arbitrary patronage, 
so that the Tutor, (always generally in orders,) who is not a 
Fellow, might, after a meritorious period of instruction claim a 
benefice in the Church ? Equitably, a higher proportion of the 
fee, which the student ought now to pay for his superior educa- 
tion, should be allowed to those Tutors who do not enjoy the 
benefit of a Fellowship and its results. 

The third condition of the Tutorial system is, the sufficiency of 
the academically authorised boohs. — This condition, if adequately 
fidfilled, gives, in my opinion, a decided advantage to the Tutorial 
over the Professorial scheme of education, — at least as the latter 
is now constituted in this kingdom ; (and if combined with the 
second condition, even over the Professorial in its most perfect 
organisation abroad.) For — 

In the first place, as existing among ourselves, the Professor is 
not improbably unequal to his office; no method of academical 
patronage prevalent in Britain being good, — one, in fact, is 
only more vicious than another. The standard of academical 
competence is, consequently, low; and the Professor too often, 
even on that low standard, an inadequate instructor. But on this 
matter I need not at present enter, having already treated of it 
in detail. (See pp. 348-385.) 

In the second place, the doctrine of a Professor is at best only 
the opinion of an individual. — If appointed by an incompetent, an 
irresponsible, a partial authority, he is probably of merely ordi- 
nary talents, or of merely ordinary information ; in either case, 
therefore, his opinions, on the subject which he has an academical 
monopoly to teach, are not worth the knowing. — If the Professor 
be a man of talent, his ingenuity may easily mislead both himself 
and others ; and, exempt from criticism, he may continue to pro- 
pagate for decades, with the authority of a privileged teacher and 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 715 

the contagion of admiring pupils, doctrines not only theoretically 
false, but practically dangerous ; doctrines which, if published to 
the world, are lightly analysed into a tissue of sophistry and half 
knowledge. It may indeed be, that a Professorial course is trust- 
worthy and instructive, supplying a want in the patent literature 
of the subject ; or affording a useful introduction to its study. 
But this is rare. How few academical courses have been thought 
worthy of the press, even by self-love or the partiality of friend- 
ship ; and of those which have actually been published, how few 
have the public thought worthy of perusal ! But for the chance 
of such a possibility, I hardly think, that a great University, like 
Oxford, (which has at its disposal a large and costly staff of Tutors, 
and, therefore, is not, like poorer Universities, dependent on Pro- 
fessors,) would be wise, in preferring the dangerous probabilities 
of our present Professorial system, or even the favourable contin- 
gencies of any better which it is ever likely to compass. It would, 
in my humble opinion, be far safer to elevate its actual educa- 
tion by Tutors ; than, subverting that, to return to its old edu- 
cation by Professors, (still statutory though this be,) even with 
the best prospects of improvement.* 

* I have latterly, in some subordinate points, modified my opinion on the 
Professorial and Tutorial systems, in reference to Oxford, and in reference 
to each other ; — and this principally from three considerations. 

In the first place, I was formerly inclined to professorial, as the chief 
academical instruction, not certainly on its own account, (for I always held, 
that what is good in a lecture would be better in a book,) ; but because I 
saw therein the only mean of collecting the students in large classes : regarding 
a large class as the necessary condition of exercise ; and deeming exercise, if 
not the sole, as the paramount, function of a University in its general education. 
I had even, in theory, imagined a plurality of Professors on the same subject, 
in order to reduce the class of auditors to the possibility of being exercised ; 
thinking, perhaps, too much of the utility of professorial competition and the 
example of ancient Padua, too little of the countervailing evils and the 
example of Universities in general. But though this plan has been also 
advocated by my learned friend, Mr Bonamy Price, in his late ingenious 
u Suggestions for the extension of Professorial teaching in the University of 
Oxford," I cannot now maintain it. It had not formerly occurred to me, that 
this exercise might be effected, and better effected, by other means than the 
Professor. Of this I am now persuaded. For, were the Tutors merely raised 
to their proper level as instructors, as without difficulty could be done, they 
might then easily be drawn from the College, and each, like a Professor, 
applied as an individual in the exercise of University classes. Nay, as the 
proper execution of this office requires numbers, the Tutors, in their plurality, 



716 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

In the third place, there are in all or most of the departments 
of knowledge which a University, in its fundamental faculty, 
ought by preference to teach, certain essential parts, certain 
primary or preparatory truths, certain books even, which it is of 
the utmost consequence, that a student should, above all and before 
all, be made familiar with.* But these, for the very reason that 
they are certain, while they at once supersede his speculations and 
occupy his course ; are apt to be omitted, or slurred over, or 
given, without reference to their author, even by a Professor not 
ignorant of their relations and importance. The advantage of 

could discharge it better than is possible by all the exertions of any single 
exerciser — of any Professor. 

In the second place, a maturer reflection has convinced me, — that while 
the Tutors ought not to be abolished but improved; their subjection, as 
subordinates to the personal and arbitrary instruction of a Professor, would, 
by men of standing and intelligence, be felt as degrading, even were the Pro- 
fessor raised to what he ought to be, and as simply intolerable, were the 
Professor to remain at the present British level, that is, be no better than 
themselves. 

In the third place, if the Professorial system, for the non-physical — the 
non-exhibitory studies, were again restored, and still more if a plurality of 
Professors lectured on the same science, there could either no longer be any 
unity in the examination for a degree, or the subjects of examination must 
be divorced from the teaching of the academical instructor. 

To these three considerations there may be added & fourth; — the improba- 
bilijy, that even if the Professorial system were re-established, it would be 
established on a proper footing, that is, on a footing such as is not yet realised 
in any University of this kingdom, and to the realisation of which within 
herself, Oxford would make undoubtedly a strenuous resistance. But such 
was the hypothesis. 

* In truth, all the older (as indeed some of the later) Professorial " pre- 
lections," were only explanatory of books ; and the various departments of 
the Faculty of Arts, throughout the Universities of Europe, owe their con- 
stitution, in fact, to Aristotle, whose different works (either in his plain text, 
or in this text and a commentary, or in an abstract from this text,) were 
what the " Reader" attempted, — were, indeed, what alone he was permit- 
ted, to expound. The older Professors were therefore intermediate between 
our present Professors and our present Tutors. In Louvaiu, for example, 
(p. 646, sq.), the Professors of the Psedagogia bore, perhaps, even more 
analogy to College Tutors than to University Professors. The older acade- 
mical instructors thus, in fact, united what more recently have been severed. 
Nor was the union useless ; for beside combining the advantages of the two 
systems of teaching, professorial and tutorial, it comprised others of far 
higher consequence, in an unexclusive employment of all the means of exer- 
cise and excitation. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 717 

the taught is thus, too often, sacrificed to the glory of the teacher ; 
the unhappy learner being inflated by the syllabub of novel para- 
dox, not nourished by the bread of ancient truth. The reverse 
of this a University ought to ensure. And in the documents 
which an alumnus ought by preference to study, there is more 
than sufficient to exhaust the curriculum of Arts. A series of such 
documents therefore the University of Oxford, having adopted 
the plan of Tutorial instruction, is even bound to provide and 
privilege ; as the materials of private study by the pupils, — of 
explanation by the Tutors in the Colleges, — and of exercise by the 
Tutors in the " schools." 

But coming to the great question — Is this condition by Oxford 
adequately fulfilled ? — To this we must, without qualification, 
emphatically answer — No. Indeed every, the remotest requi- 
site towards this fulfilment remains still unsupplied. There has in 
Oxford been no attempt even to organize an intelligent board by 
whom such designation, selection and collection might be carefully, 
and continually made. The business of such a board of studies is 
neither easy nor temporary. The right performance of its duties 
supposes great learning and great judgment ; and its decisions of 
one year, it should be ready to revise and even to reverse, the 
next. It ought to be actuated by no motive but the scientific 
interest of the student ; and, of course, in its choice of works for 
academical reading, it would regard as foolish any limitation by 
country or by school. But such a selection is not more difficult 
than necessary. A University which employs a tutorial or semi- 
tutorial system is bound to have its own series of approved books, 
for its own cycle of approved studies ; and among the " academical 
courses" which have, in consequence, been collected and composed, 
we possess some of the most valuable contributions which have 
ever been made to learning and philosophy. But in this respect, 
Oxford has done absolutely nothing, — beyond (to say nothing of 
religion) some indication of the vaguest in its Examination Statutes 
touching the age and character of the classical works to which 
the candidate is limited. As once and again repeated, the central 
— the peculiarly academic province of speculative philosophy or 
philosophy proper is, in modern Oxford as in modern Cambridge, 
ignored. And in both, as has been also no#ced, for the same 
reason — the average inability of the Tutors. The easier parts of 
Aristotle's system were indeed still retained ; but these might, in 
the circumstances, have been as well omitted ; because, read as 



718 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

fragments, and by minds undisciplined to abstraction, they could 
neither be understood themselves, nor stimulate the intellect to 
understand aught else. There was no gradation from the easy to 
the difficult, from the new to the old. Philosophy was taught, 
philosophy was learned more by rote than by reason ; and an 
abrupt intrusion of the tyro thinker into the Ethics or Politics 
of the Stagirite might discourage or disgust even a potential 
Montesquieu. Logic alone was studied in a modern summary. 
But here too the unphilosophical character of the Oxford philo- 
sophical discipline is apparent. That University, having for- 
merly adopted, still adheres to the Compendium of Aldrich, not 
because Aldrich was a learned dialectician, but an academical dig- 
nitary ; and the book, not overvalued by its able author, after 
leading and misleading Oxford logicians, during former genera- 
tions, at last affords a more appropriate text for their corrections 
during the present,* But should Alma Mater thus lag behind 
her alumni ? 

3. The Instruction and its modes. — (Pp. 678, sq., and 703, sq.) 
The mode of instruction is varied by the various character of 
its objects. The knowledge which depends on the ocular demon- 
stration of costly collections and experiments ; — this knowledge, 
easy and palpable, requiring an appliance more of the senses than 
of the understanding, can be fully taught to all, at once, by one 
competent demonstrator. The teaching of the natural or physical 
sciences ought, therefore, as I have already observed, to be Pro- 
fessorial. On the contrary, the sciences which result less from 
perception than from thought, and which principally require, that 
the understanding of the learner should be itself vigorously 
applied ; these sciences, having no external exhibition, are not 
astricted to individual teaching, and if many can more effectually 
rouse the mind of the learner to elaborative exertion than one, 
will best be taught by a well organised plurality of teachers, — in 
other words, through a good Tutorial system. This good Tutorial 
system, which supposes always a competency in the individual, is a 
combination of the private instruction by a Tutor in the College, 
and of the public discipline by Tutors in the University. 

The most important academical sciences, — the cognitions, best 
in themselves, besti>as preparative for others, and best cultivating 

* See Mr Mansel's Notes on the Rudimenta of Aldrich. Of these, with- 
out disparagement to the Dean, it may be said, — " La sauce vant mieux que 
le poisson." 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 719 

the mind of the student, are all of this latter kind. I would, 
therefore, prefer for them, perhaps absolutely, and certainly 
under the circumstances of Oxford, the improved Tutorial system. 
This supposes two conditions. It supposes — 

1°, Collegial instruction by a Tutor, — collegio -tutorial classes. — 
The student having by himself attentively perused, and, as far as 
possible, mastered a certain portion of a certain book, goes up 
along with his class-fellows of the same college to the Tutor's 
lecture. Here the pupil reads, repeats, and is examined ; his 
mistakes are corrected, his deficiencies supplied, and his difficulties 
solved. The Tutor, now never an inferior graduate, has his zeal 
and emulation stimulated towards an ever higher instruction of 
his pupils ; conscious, that from day to day they are to be pub- 
licly tried, publicly collated, and that his own character and 
competence will, though indirectly, assuredly be meted by theirs. 
The pupils, on their part, are actuated still more strongly by the 
like feelings ; for their honour is directly interested in going- 
down, as well as possibly prepared, into the important and public 
contest of the University class. Thus it is, that new life and 
strength would, under the improved system, be inspired into the 
collegial tuition; and it might then be said of the Colleges of 
Oxford, no less truly than of the Colleges of Louvain (p. 649), 
" here no labour is spared, either by the Tutors in teaching, or 
by the Pupils in learning." This further supposes — 

2°, University discipline by Tutor 'S, — academico-tutorial classes. 
— The students who, in the several Houses, and under their 
several Tutors, have been prepared in the same book, are now to 
be collected for further examination, &c. into a public or Univer- 
sity class. But as the number of such students might be so great, 
(trenching perhaps on four hundred,) that they would, if congre- 
gated into a single class, baffle exercise ; and as, at the same 
time, it is of vital importance for the sake of competition, that the 
classes should not be made too small, it might hit the mean, so 
to divide them, that a hundred and fifty being the maximum, the 
correlative University classes might probably be three. 

In these classes, (which might meet for an hour on five, or for 
an hour and a-half on four days of the week,) the students should 
be exercised in examination, oral and written, in compositions to 
be strictly criticised and read, &c. ; and so called up, (as by the 
lottery of an alphabet,) that it shall be impossible to anticipate 



720 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

the occurrence. These classes to be each conducted by at least 
three Tutors ; who may either remain in one, or circulate, more 
or less rapidly, through all. It might be better, probably, to 
have the Tutors specially appointed to the University classes, 
though the appointment ought only to be temporary ; and a 
certain emolument should, likewise, be attached to this function. 
The office of University Tutor would thus be rendered at once of 
higher honour and of greater responsibility. In a class one Tutor 
should act as Prseses ; but on what principle this pre-eminence 
should be regulated, is a matter indeterminate and of minor impor- 
tance. No Tutor should examine or criticise his own pupils, — 
Tutor and pupil should, in fact, be separated in all relative to 
academical honours. In an exercitation of the students the 
plurality of the Tutors affords great advantages over the indivi- 
duality of a Professor ; and in such an exercising is comprised the 
most, and the most peculiar, of the benefits which academical 
instruction affords. For Tutors being once competent to the 
work, may be indefinitely multiplied according to its exigencies ; 
whereas a Professor, if he do not, as he generally does, altogether 
neglect the labour, yet limits and must limit it, to the narrow 
sphere of his individual capabilities. 

The exercise of the student in the University classes, should 
be partly exigible, partly ultroneous. The former would simply 
qualify for a degree, through a mere certificate of attendance ; 
whereas the latter would afford the mean towards distinction and 
class honours. 

Attendance on all the University classes should not be requisite 
for graduation, but only on a certain number. Some classes may 
be too elementary for some students ; and, on the contrary, some 
students, though not undeserving of a degree, may want the 
scholarship or capacity necessary for some classes. — Attendance 
to be secured and ascertained, by a catalogue called daily, or at 
irregular intervals. — Certain classes to vary annually their books. 

The University classes, in general, ought to commence and fin- 
ish with the academical year, — that is, in the terms of Michaelmas 
and Trinity ; and attendance during three of these years should 
be required for a degree. This would, of course, necessitate a 
modification of the irregular entrance and the irregular attend- 
ance, still tolerated in the English Universities. The vacations 
might perhaps remain unchanged ; for these cessations in the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. - 721 

University classes could be usefully employed as seasons of 
domestic repetition or revisal. (See p. 683, note.) But on this 
and other matters of detail, I avoid speaking. * 

* There is another, though a minor, and merely collegia!, abuse, which could 
not survive the congregation of the academical youth for serious study in 
unexclusive classes ; — I mean the foolish distinction of what (to say nothing 
of another, that of "Nobleman,") is usually called " Gentleman ox Fellow 
Commoner; " and which, though too contemptible for notice in the text, may 
be dispatched in a foot-note. To those ignorant of the English collegial 
system, be it known then, that for payment of an extra rate of Tutor's fees, 
room rent, &c, an intrant is admitted into certain Houses, under the above 
designation, — dines at a different table from the other undergraduates, — walks 
about in a peculiar garb, — and is specially privileged to neglect the ordinary 
discipline, the ordinary necessity of study. " The Gentlemen Commoners " 
are, I find in Oxford, now in number nearly a hundred ; constituting a 
sixteenth part of the whole undergraduates. They are admitted by a 
majority of the Halls, — by a minority of the Colleges. 

In every point of view, the distinction, name and thing, is, apart from 
the lucrative return to certain parties, utterly absurd. 

It is grammatically absurd. The word " Gentleman " properly means — 
" man of family ; " but the collegial distinction can now be purchased by 
any ; and is, indeed, peculiarly affected by those who have no other preten- 
sion, but this same purchase, to the inverse appellation. — It is historically 
absurd. For though of old, birth and wealth might, here as elsewhere, hold 
some mutual proportion ; in this country, at least, they now hold and have 
long held, none. — It is statistically absurd. For whilst in aristocratic Germany, 
(where blood is legally discriminated and privileged,) a Prince even of the 
Empire frequents his father's University in the plain guise of an ordinary 
" bursch ; " in democratic England, where blood is not discriminated, far 
less privileged, by law, and in the richest, oldest and most venerable of our 
national Universities, each aspiring Snobson publicly ventilates his private 
purchase of an ironical gentility in siik and velvet. Here, we see, in one 
College, a far descended nobleman, assiduous in study as a simple commoner ; 
and there, the issue of a topping tradesman, the scion, perhaps, of his lordship's 
tailor, idly rustling it as " Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," in the next. — It is 
socially absurd. For if " Gentleman" be taken in its popular acceptation, 
for "man of honour," its attribution to a few is a gratuitous and groundless 
insult upon the many. But, in both its acceptations, the collegial distinction 
is, socially considered, a matter either of scandal or of contempt. — It is poli- 
tically absurd. For the Crown itself, while it creates a nobleman, is unable to 
create a gentleman. Gentlemen, however, the English colleges presume to 
make and unmake. But in truth, their conservative Heads do what in them 
lies radically to level ranks, by subverting in their Houses the natural aris- 
tocracy, of which, for a paltry gain, they consent to prostitute, vulgarise aud 
render ridiculous the very name. With these collegial heralds, (as with some 
heraldic colleges,) 

— " titulos regina Pecunia donat 
Et genus et proavos, sordesqne parentis honestat." 
2z 



722 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL (C). 

4. The Excitement to Study. (Pp. 675, sq.. and 702. sq.) 
Emulation is the one motive to diligence which the student may 

— It is academically absurd. For the distinction is, throughout Christendom, 
known only in the English Universities. In these, it is even unknown to 
the public and statutory University, either of Oxford or of Cambridge; it 
originates exclusively in the licence usurped by the private Houses, the 
Houses through which the national seminary has been illegally superseded ; 
and even of these, it is tolerated only in a minority of the Colleges, in a ma- 
jority of the Halls, as an excuse for certain extraordinary charges, whilst in 
the (educationally) best, — indeed, in most of the Houses, it has been abolished, 
as at once a nuisance and an opprobrium. But the abuse is carried to its 
climax, — carried, indeed, into another category, by being made, in many 
cases, a mean of pecuniary extortion. Accommodation in a licensed House 
is, in the English Universities, necessary, and, at the same time, now limited ; 
a long previous application is requisite for admission into the better Houses : 
and the others are thus able, without leaving their lodgings unlet, to compel 
the intrant to compound for the sham title and the suicidal privileges, which 
are paid for — and despised. Nor by these colleges can it be said, — "My 
poverty and not my will consents ; " for to aggravate still farther the dis- 
grace, the wealthiest foundations are the principal extortionists. 

But, finally and principally, it is educationally absurd. The Houses pro- 
fess to afford the means of education, to replace, in fact, of themselves, the 
University ; and yet, in so far as they maintain this distinction, they do all 
within their power, to frustrate the whole scantling of instruction which they 
now dispense. For, as regards the members themselves styled " Gentlemen 
Commoners : " — these, admitted, ostensibly for education, are relieved from 
educational discipline, albeit precisely those for whom such discipline is most 
imperiously requisite. They are virtually told, indeed, by coliegial wisdom, 
that though academical residence may be a fashionable form, academical 
study is of very trivial importance. — And, as regards the other members : — 
there is thus authoritatively introduced, fostered, paraded, and imposed, in 
what ought, in what professes, to be a domestic society for sedulous applica- 
tion, a contagious example of favoured idleness, insubordination, and con- 
tempt of knowledge. u It is at College above all places," says Napoleon, 
(Bourrienne I. xxv.) "that equality should prevail.' 1 At least, the only in- 
equality recognised in a seminary of education should be that of intellect and 
learning. In Oxford and Cambridge, however, some Houses still think dif- 
ferently. To pay more, to learn less, in them obtains academical distinction, 
— is actually proclaimed, in these foci of illumination, the criterion of a 
" Gentleman ! " — Especial honour is therefore due to those " gentlemen," 
who prove themselves not idlers, though thus collegially privileged, nay 
encouraged, to be idle. 

The absurdity is, however, so singular, so flagrant, so perverse, and withal 
so vulgar; that, whilst at present in the reawakening spirit of the Universi- 
ties, it only languishes in the privacy and division ( t% Divide et impera. ") 
of the— not best Colleges and Halls: the suobbism would perish forthwith 
(if from no other cause) under public ridicule, were the students once again 
collected into classes in the public schools : — though T do not imagine, that the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 723 

be safely supposed to bring with him to the University ; and this 
motive, as we have seen, Oxford does not fully employ. To cor- 
rect this deficiency, there are certain conditions which it is requi- 
site to fulfil. 

In the first place, there are the conditions of publicity, num- 
bers, and co-equality. These would be conjunctly supplied, were 
the alumni of the University once again collected from the privacy 
of Hall and College into the publicity of the academic " Schools," — 
from classes of an average of seven or eight (Coplestone's esti- 
mate) to classes of a hundred or a hundred and fifty. 

In the second place, the competition roused in large and public 
classes can alone supply the deficiencies of the public examination 
for a degree, viewed as an instrument of emulation ; for in them 
may the stimulus be applied to all, and to all during their wJiole 
course of academic study. 

In the third place, the condition of exercise (Examination, Dis- 
putation, Writing, &c), as the mean through which the learner 
may distinguish himself, can alone, or alone in any adequate 
degree, be made effective in large and public classes. For only 
in exercise can the powers of a competitor be drawn forth into 
energy ; and as only in such classes is exercise available, so only 
in such classes can that energy be compared, estimated, and ade- 
quately honoured. 

This honour may be awarded by the suffrage, either of the 
whole class (taught and teacher), or by the Tutors alone. A com- 
bination of the two would, I think, be preferable ; and perhaps 
thus : — Suppose that the students of the same book are distribu- 
ted into three University classes ; each amounting to the maxi- 
mum of a hundred and fifty. At the close of the academical year, 
let the (regular) attenders of a class designate by suffrage, say 
thirty (or twenty) of their number, as worthy of the first, 
second, &c, place of honour. These honoured students may be 
divided into decades. The nine decades may then be taken by 

patrons of the practice would in these venture to propose "reserved seats." 
But as the distinction is personally profitable, and as to some minds, what is 
personally profitable appears always to be universally expedient, (" What 
will not man defend? ") ; we may be sure, that for this, among other motives, 
will any restoration of a public and university education be strenuously re- 
sisted,— if possible ; for a recovery of the University to health, would infalli- 
bly, at once, determine a cure of this scabies debilitatis in that learned body. 
And the Houses, — they cannot, surely, always be allowed, both to subvert 
and to dishonour the University. 



724 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

the Tutors of the three classes acting together ; the students of 
the corresponding decade all tried against each other ; and the 
whole thirty finally subordinated in the order of merit. This 
ultimate arrangement would thus be partly the work of the pupils, 
partly of the Tutors. — The whole division into decades may, how- 
ever, and perhaps profitably, be omitted ; the final distribution of 
the ninety places of honour among the ninety preferred students, 
being, with any adequate restriction, left to the Tutors. 

Before the suffrages of a class are taken, a solemn promise (in 
fact an oath) of conscientious performance of duty to be required 
of all voters by the presiding Tutor ; and (to make the perform- 
ance more easy) the suffrages to be given in writing, with the 
voter's signature, to be known, therefore, only, as counted by 
the Tutors. The Tutors themselves to promise in like manner. 
The list of honours to be printed in large characters ; a copy sent 
to each House ; and one framed and hung up in some public place 
of the University. It should appear perhaps in the Calendar. 

5 The Degree or Certificate of Proficiency in Arts. (Pp. 689, 
and 706, with 645, sq.) 

It is proper, in the first place, to state what Oxford has done 
in this respect. And here it is necessary to distinguish the past 
and the prospective legislations of the University, establishing, as 
they do, two very different schemes of Examination for this degree. 

By the past legislation of the University, I mean that com- 
mencing in 1807. In this, down to the present time, (to say 
nothing of the Responsions), 1°, there was only a single examina- 
tion, and this first competent in the thirteenth term or commence- 
ment of the fourth year ; and 2°, in that examination there were 
only two Departments of trial and distinction. — the Literal Huma- 
niores, and the Discipline Mathematical et Physical, — which latter 
was wholly optional to the candidate. So far all was uniform. 
But several steps, through several statutes, multiplied the classes 
of honour in each department, from two to four ; persons in the 
same class being always accounted equal, and alphabetically 
arranged. 

By the new statute (passed in 1850, and to commence in the 
Easter Examination of 1853), the preceding scheme is changed in 
sundry important points. — Besides the Responsions — there are to 
be two Examinations, with two relative Classificatio)is: the First, 
commencing witli the eighth and ending with the twelfth term ; 
the Second, commencing with the thirteenth and ending with the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 725 

eighteenth term, (normally at least and for honours). — The First 
of these Examinations has,, as of old, two Departments, and these 
nearly the same ; to wit, Greek and Latin Literature, and Pure 
Mathematics, — which last is now, as formerly, wholly optional. 
Each of these departments is to have only a First and Second Class 
of Honour. In these classes all the candidates are, as hitherto, 
equal, — their names being alphabetically arranged. For the first 
time, the names of those who pass without honour are to be pub- 
lished. — The Second Examination, which is new, h&sfour depart- 
ments, or, as they are not happily called, " Schools ; " to wit, Humane 
Letters, — Mathematical and Physical Sciences, — Natural Science, 
— Jurisprudence and Modern History. Each of these depart- 
ments has, what is old, four Classes of Honour, in which the 
names follow^ alphabetically, and are of course published. But 
besides these classes, the names of those who merely pass, are 
henceforth, as in the first examination, to be also recorded. — To 
qualify for a degree, it is necessary to pass again in the depart- 
ment of Humane Letters, and (besides attending two courses of 
Public Lectures in the University) to pass in some one of the 
other three. 

Neither of these schemes, though both in certain respects are 
praiseworthy, seems to me such as ought to satisfy a University, 
and that the University of Oxford. In so far as encouragement 
is thus given to pursuits useful, as well objectively in the pursuit of 
other studies, as subjectively in the cultivation of the student's 
mind, they are of course deserving of approbation. But these 
ends, neither scheme of examination appears at all adequately to 
accomplish. In fact, while the former shows as imperfect and 
redundant, the latter shows not only as imperfect and redundant, 
but even as suicidal. 

In the first place, the imperfection, common to both the schemes, 
is manifested in the want, — academically unexampled out of the 
illegal condition of the English Universities, — of a really philoso- 
phical department, for study and examination. But of this I have 
already spoken (pp. 695, sq.) 

In the second place, the redundance, common to both, lies in 
the mathematical department (pure and applied.) Mathematical 
study, it is perhaps idle to repeat, we here consider, not in its ob- 
jective relation as a mean in or towards certain material sciences ; 
but in its subjective relation exclusively, as a mean of cultivating 
the capacity itself of thought. In this point of view, I have 



720 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

already shown, and at great length, (pp. 257-827, 621*-652*), 
that it is useless, even detrimental, if not applied temperately and 
with due caution ; for, instead of invigorating, it may enervate the 
reasoning faculty, and is, therefore, a study undeserving of an 
indiscriminate encouragement in a liberal education of the mind. 

In this relation, Oxford seems at fault, in both its schemes 
of examination. In the former, the Mathematical sciences 
obtained one of the two departments between which the aca- 
demical graduation trial was divided ; though Oxford, leaving 
always these sciences wholly optional to the candidate, stands in 
favourable contrast with Cambridge. For this University making 
Mathematics, and Mathematics alone, a passport to its degree and 
relative distinctions ; in fact, seemed as if it acted on the futile 
inscription falsely imagined over Plato's school. 

In the prospective statute the inconsistency is, perhaps, even 
enhanced. For here, though Mathematics are still always optional, 
they, however, constitute ostensibly a moiety of the first examina- 
tion. But the policy of the Oxford Convocation in conceding to 
the Disciplinae Mathematicae a half of the whole academical honours, 
is shown to be unwise, even by the evidence drawn from the 
Oxford examinations themselves. And thus : — 

Looking firstly to the Instructed. — For the decade from 1838 to 
1847, we have the following results : All the honours in D. M. 
(255) bear the proportion to all the honours in L. H. (923) of some- 
what more than a fourth. Again, about four-fifths (79 out of 106) 
of the First Class of L. H. are in no class of D. M. at all ; whereas 
only about one- fifth (10 out of 48) of the First Class of D. M. are 
in no class of L. H. Finally, there are six-seienths of men classed 
in L. H. who are in no class of D. M (822 to 124) ; whereas there 
is hardly more than a half (136 out of 260) of those having an 
honour in D. M. and no honour in L. H. In fact, those taking a 
Mathematical honour amount even to a number, thus compara- 
tively small, in consequence of the comparative facility by which 
such a distinction can always be obtained. 

Looking, secondly, to the Instructors. — The Table (p. 6o5) 
exhibits a still more striking illustration in reference to them ; for 
the teachers, and in particular the tutors, should, if at all compe- 
tent to their function, manifest a greatly larger proportion of 
highest honours in a department specially encouraged by the 
University, than the undergraduates at large, even of the highest 
dollegdsi. But, mark what is the case. Nineteen Houses alone 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 727 

have any recognised Tutor; the other five are consequently 
beyond criticism. Of the nineteen : Out of the highest twelve, 
only two (5 and 7) have even a single Tutor in this First Class ; 
and no House has more. Mathematical talent rises, however, as 
the Houses sink. Of these the next lower, and but for one the 
lowest, six, show each a Tutor thus honoured. There are, conse- 
quently, in all, eight Tutors with the highest (that is the one not 
disqualifying) Mathematical distinction, and forty-one without it ; 
a proportion, in other words, of less than a sixth. — And to 
descend even to the lowest : five Houses, (four Colleges and 
one Hall), have among their Tutors no honours whatever ; whilst 
three Colleges rejoice in a third class ; and three also in a second. 

I am far from disparaging the present members of the Univer- 
sity of Oxford, for this deficiency in Mathematical study. On the 
contrary, I think that the indifference to Mathematical distinction, 
there now manifested, both by teachers and by taught, is cer- 
tainly not greater than the educational inexpediency of mathe- 
matical study might amply warrant. But granting this, the prac- 
tice of Oxford, if its attribute be prudence, condemns the wisdom 
of its own legislature. Nothing, indeed, can be more irrational, 
than for a University specially to encourage, and to encourage, 
too, at the expense of others, a study, both so worthless in itself 
as an educational mean, and, notwithstanding all external and fac- 
titious fostering, so justly rated at the proper value by its own 
members in general, teachers as well as taught. Is this denied ? 
The dilemma then emerges : — If Mathematics be truly deserving of 
academical protection, in a course of liberal education, what must 
be thought of a University which abandons so indispensable a 
science to twenty-four seminaries — to forty -nine Tutors, only eight 
of whom — are not proved comparatively incompetent to teach it ? 
If, on the other hand, this science be unworthy of academical 
encouragement, what must be thought of a University, which, at 
the cost of the other moiety of its instruction, accords to a subjec- 
tively useless or detrimental study one-half of its formal education, 
one-half of its formal honours ? 

In leaving the Mathematical disciplines always optional to the 
candidate, Oxford acted, in my opinion, rightly. But why, 
regarding Mathematical study as of so ambiguous a use, as to be 
wholly unnecessary, even to those whom it distinguished by the 
highest honours, Oxford should still accord to so doubtfid, so dis- 
pensable a study, a full half of its professed education, and a full 



728 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

half of its proclaimed distinction ; — this, I confess, appears to me 
an insoluble contradiction. From the new Examination Statute, 
we have seen, that Mathematics, (pure and applied,) are to consti- 
tute one of the three optional " Schools," in the second examina- 
tion. So far, so reasonably. But why in the First Examination, 
pure Mathematics should be still left, though still always unin- 
forced, to counterbalance, in appearance, the all-important cycle 
of imperative instruction, comprised under the name of Greek 
and Latin Literature ; — what is this but a remnant of the old 
inconsistency, — of the former futile attempt at conciliating two 
conflictive opinions ? 

In the third place, the new or prospective statute is suicidal ; 
for it tends to reduce the value of the very honours which it pro- 
poses to enhance. This effect is direct ; and results not from one, 
but from many various causes. 

1°. To speak first of the same department : — The value of an 
Honour depends upon its unity. — What is prized, as singular, is 
disregarded or contemned, as plural. The imagination, in fact, is 
no longer agreeably affected ; it must even exert itself, and not 
unpainfully, to escape confusion. How much more satisfactory is 
it, on the present scheme, to be of a First Class, with its one pos- 
sible contingency ; than, on the future scheme, to be of a First 
Class, certainly, but of a First Class varying for better for worse, 
uncertainly to any of the seven unequal combinations of a highest 
honour in the same department; Thus, the division of the honour 
into two is, for its own value, for its own efficiency, to be depre- 
cated. No harm, on the contrary, could have ensued, — indeed, it 
would have been a manifest improvement, — to allow the candi- 
date to divide his examination, to give up one class of books or 
subjects at an earlier period, another at a later, and then to have 
all his answers taken conjunctly into account, in determining his 
rank in one ultimate and first published classification. But of this 
again. 

2°. An Honour is prized in proportion to its rarity. But 
twenty classes, comprising six First Classes of Honour, are hence- 
forth to be awarded, where eight and two, respectively, were 
heretofore conceded; academical Honours therefore will inconti- 
nently become cheap and vulgar, from their very numbers. 

H°. But what, besides vulgarity and cheapness, reduces Honours 
to the lowest, is that, though nominally equal, these are not the 
equal rewards of equal talent and exertion. This absurdity at once 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 729 

debases a whole system of Honours: what had previously been 
respected, is now indiscriminately despised. Such a result will, I 
am constrained to think, be the natural, even the necessary, con- 
sequence of the new statute. We have here four or six rows 
of Honours — of Classes, the same in name, in rank, in number, 
and assigned to four or six co-ordinate departments of know- 
ledge. Apparently, and for aught that the statute intimates, all 
these co-ordinate departments and corresponding classes convey 
to a candidate the same amount of honour. He is equally by the 
University a supremely distinguished graduate, whether he be 
First Class in one or other of the departments. And yet the 
truth is, that here there can be no proportion between depart- 
ment and department, between class and class. A man may fail 
after long years of toil in meriting the highest Honour in one 
department, who may obtain it in another, by the amusing occu- 
pation of a few weeks. The absurdity is however carried to 
its climax, when it is considered that the University here stimu- 
lates the shorter, easier, more attractive, but less useful study, to 
a neglect of the study, more useful, though less attractive, easy 
and short. The University, in fact, thus errs in a sixfold man- 
ner, in encouraging, what — 1°, needs no encouragement; and 
2°, is less deserving of it ; in not adequately encouraging, what, — 
3°, needs encouragement; and 4°, is more deserving of it; for, 
5°, it awards the same amount of honour to the brief, facile, 
amusing, and to the tedious, difficult, irksome ; thus, 6°, pro- 
moting what requires and merits no protection, at the expense, 
even, of what pre-eminently does both. Many years ago, I con- 
tended (p. 343) that of all British Universities, Oxford (from acci- 
dental circumstances, indeed,) stood alone, in affording, however 
inadequately, to solid learning the preference and encouragement 
academically due; and stated it as my " conviction, that if the 
legislature did its duty, Oxford was the British University sus- 
ceptible of the easiest and most effectual regeneration." But this, 
if the present statute be allowed to stand, I can no longer even 
hope ; and now that this ancient school itself has been drawn into 
the vulgar vortex, I contemplate nothing but our Universities, 
one and all, declining into popular seminaries for a cultivation of 
the superficial, the amusing, the palpable, the materially useful. 
Were it indeed attempted, under this statute, to equalise a class 
in one department with the corresponding class in another ; the 
attempt, if possible, would conduce only to render matters worse. 



730 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

For example, could a highest Honour in the " Natural Sciences," 
only be obtained like a highest Honour in the co-ordinate depart- 
ment of - Humane Letters," after an arduous and engrossing 
study during many years; then would application be diverted 
from the fundamental, total, and comparatively useful, to the 
adventitious, fragmentary, and comparatively useless. But this is 
impossible. The Natural Sciences are essentially easy ; requir- 
ing comparatively little talent for their promotion, and only the 
most ordinary capacity for their acquisition. Their study, there- 
fore, does not cultivate the mind. As Bacon remarks of induc- 
tion applied to physical pursuits : — " Nostra via inveniendi 
scientias exa3quat fere ingenia, et non multum excellentia} eorum 
relinquit. . . . Haec nostra, (ut saepe diximus,) felicitatis cujusdam 
sunt potius quam facultatis, et potius temporis partus quam 
ingenii." (N. 0. i. § 122.) In thus honouring the easy and 
amusing, equally with the difficult and painful, our Alma Mater 
imitates the nurse who would bribe the child by the same reward, 
to a dose of bitters or to a sugar plum. The comparative 
inutility of all the new " Schools," with the old department of 
Mathematics, is indeed virtually confessed in the prospective sta- 
tute itself. For the candidate is herein allowed to omit all of 
these except some one; the University thus according its high- 
est Honour to his proficiency in a kind of knowledge which it 
admits to be unnecessary, and although he may be no proficient 
in any knowledge of any of the kinds which it proclaims as indis- 
pensable. The only commendation merited by this statute, is. 
that it shows in favourable contrast to the Cambridge Examina- 
tion Graces of 1848,* of which it is, however, manifestly an imi- 

* This is saying little in favour of the Oxford Statute, for the Cambridge 
regulation equals even the worst measures in that University, and is wholly 
unparalleled in any other. The thing is not only illegal, but beneath criti- 
cism ; if regarded as aught higher than a tax on the undergraduates of 
Arts, in favour of all and sundry who, in the Cambridge spectral faculties of 
Law, Medicine, &c, are accidentally decorated with the nominal status of 
Professor. The students of the Liberal Arts are taxed for the profit, amongst 
sundry others, of two Professors of Medicine, two of Law. Bnt whilst thus 
commended to special sciences, which no other University has ever even 
proposed to the alumni of its general faculty, the Cambridge student of this 
faculty has no opportunity afforded him of becoming acquainted with what 
all other Universities, and Cambridge itself by statute, justly regard as the 
most essential of preparatory disciplines. This new regulation is, indeed, 
only the last of a series of illegalities, calculated, not for the permanent good 
<>f the nation and University, but for the temporary advantage of the usurp- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 731 

tation. For both measures innovate in the same ways ; both 
curiously invert the very purpose of an academical honour ; and 

ing interest. In Cambridge the student is now, and has long been, taught, 
not Avhat and how he ought to learn, but what and how it is possible — it is 
convenient for that interest to teach him. Even in the preparatory faculty, 
he is, therefore, treated to Mathematics, not to Logic ; inured to calculate 
like a machine, not disciplined to reason like an intelligence. The easier 
sciences, — Physics — Physiology, — Physic even, are presented to him at 
random, and in various forms ; Psychology and the more arduous gym- 
nastic of philosophy, in none. His attention is multifariously expanded 
on the world without ; but, never is his reflection contorted on the world 
within. If many things, both right and wrong, be taught him of mate- 
rial forces, he learns nothing whatever of mental powers ; and though, 
perhaps, superficially indoctrinated touching the functions of his body, 
he is left scientifically uninstructed, that he even has a soul. — In all 
this illegal Cambridge, (with the partial — I say the partial exception of 
illegal Oxford,) stands alone. — Indeed, whatever mechanism for the time 
the Tutors were capable of teaching, that in Cambridge has been always 
sure of being academically proclaimed — the one thing worthy to be aca- 
demically taught. Above a century and a half ago, Philosophy was 
tutorially contracted to the easy mechanism of Physics, and extended 
to the easier mechanism of Mathematics. For sixty years, as has been 
said, after the appearance of the u Principia," the physical doctrines of 
Newton were treated by the Tutors of his own University as false and 
perplexing innovations, and the (self-styled} romances of Descartes, who 
also confessed the anti-logical effect of mathematical study (p. 271,) — con- 
tinued to n be there collegially inculcated, as the only elements of a sound and 
scientific education. Compelled, at length, to follow the age and its intelli- 
gence, for fifty years, Newtonianisni in Physics and Mathematics remained 
in Cambridge the symbol of academical orthodoxy. But, finally, for the 
last fifty years, the most mechanical Mathematics — the algebraic analysis, 
educationally condemned by Newton (p. 306), — has risen to a decided 
predominance in Cambridge ; and that school is now at once anti-Newtonian, 
anti- Cartesian, antigeometric. Of what value, then, are the recent opinions 
of the Cambridge Syndicate or Cambridge Senate, in regard to " the supe- 
riority of Mathematics, as the basis of General Education ? " Would they 
seriously maintain, (the reverse of all authority, as indeed of obtrusive fact,) 
that mathematicians, out of mathematics, reason better than their neigh- 
bours ? 

The very constituting of interested parties into the official, and (even . 
exceptionally) unsworn arbiters of sufficiency and distinction, would be 
decisive of the new "Triposes" — for the absurdity does not apply to the 
old. - In every University where such impolicy has been followed, as, indeed, 
it too generally has, degrees and academical honours have there become 
contemptible. But, in this instance, Cambridge abandons the function of 
trial and classification to these ex officio examiners, who, in all repects 
unlike the other special examiners, are both unrestrained by any form of 



732 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

both seem more or less intended to bestow on the Professors 
who, in any defunct faculty of the University, chance to have a 
titular existence, a certain profit out of the candidates proceeding 
in the still living faculty of Arts. 

The principles which I have stated of academical education, 
(pp. 674, 676, 689, sq., 695, sq., 706,) would here require the fol- 
lowing fulfilments. (It is proper, however, parenthetically to pre- 
mise, that I here say nothing of Religion. In this respect, I wholly 
acquiesce in the views of the Oxford legislature, — that a certain 
amount of theological information should be required of candi- 
dates, but that theology ought not to be proposed as a study in 
the faculty of Arts, from which academical distinction should be 
won.) 

1°, The University should confine its highest honours to those 
departments of study which are most arduous, being, at the same 
time, subjectively and objectively most use/id. This would limit 
the departments thus honoured to two ; the one of which may be 
denominated that of Humane Letters, the other, that of Philoso- 
phy. The former is of empirical, the latter of rational knowledge. 

Empirical knowledge is a knowledge of the fact. Humane 
Letters would thus comprehend all dexterity at language, all 
familiarity with literary products, all acquaintance with historical 
record. This department, by the conditions stated, should in a 
great measure be limited to the domain of Greek and Roman 
letters. 

Rational knowledge is a knowledge of the cause or reason. 
Philosophy would thus comprehend, — in a proximate sphere, the 
science of mind in its faculties, its laws, and its relations, (Psycho- 
logy, Logic, Morals, Politics, &c.) ; in a less proximate sphere, 
the science of the instrument of mind, (Grammar, Rhetoric, 
Poetic, &c.); in a remoter sphere, the science of the objects of 
mind, (Mathematics, Physics, &c.). The conditions stated would 

obligation, and yet beset by interests of various kinds, inciting them to 
attract competitors from the old Triposes to the new, by rendering the 
honours of the easier and more amusing studies, more easy also of attain- 
ment. The Oxford statute avoids many of these errors. The examiners it 
appoints, are specially constituted ad hoc, — sworn, — and not interested ; nor 
does it tax the students of Arts for the Professors of Law, Medicine, &c. — But 
as if to consummate the absurdity of the Cambridge regulations, while the 
aspirants of the new Triposes are left absolutely free, no one is allowed to 
compete for Classical distinction who has not previously taken a Mathe- 
matical honour ! 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 733 

exclude this last section from the department of highest honour ; 
for the sciences which it comprises are subjectively too unimprov- 
ing, and objectively too eccentric, too vast, and withal too easy, 
if not too attractive, to be proposed as academical disciplines of 
preparation. The Oxford distinction of the Mathematical and 
Physical sciences, into a department by themselves, is therefore, 
I think, right; as right, also, the leaving the study of that 
department to the option of the candidate. I must, however, 
dissent from Oxford theory, (contradicted, as has been seen, by 
Oxford practice,) which elevates, or has elevated, this section of 
science into one of the two departments of highest honour ; for I 
would not only divide (what is still confounded,) the Literce 
Humaniores into the two, and two exclusive, departments of 
highest honour, but relegate the Disciplince Mathematical to a 
lower order, of which I am soon to speak. The present confusion 
of the Empirical and the Rational in the one department of Literce 
Humaniores, originated in the inability of the Tutors, as at 
present constituted, to teach Philosophy as it was taught of old, 
and as by statute it should be taught still. The elevation of the 
University teacher is consequently a condition of the restoration 
of Philosophy to its proper place ; and of these I have previously 
spoken (pp. 695-702.) 

Leaving then Humane Letters and Philosophy, (apart from the 
Mathematical and Physical sciences,) as two departments, afford- 
ing two several series of primary honours : it is evident, that as 
proficiency in either or in both of these affords the exclusive 
qualification for a highest academical distinction, so a minimum, 
not in one but in each, ought to be established as the condition of 
a degree at all. What, however, the amount, and what the con- 
tents of these minima should be, — this as a matter of detail I 
overpass. 

When a candidate aspires to honours, as I have already said, 
it might be an improvement to allow him to give up his books 
and take his trial, in part, before a last examination ; provided, 
that a plan could be devised, whereby the value of his two exami- 
nations could be fixed, added, and duly rated in a decisive classi- 
fication. Of tli is I shall speak in the sequel. 

2°, Besides the departments of study, which, as most arduous 
in themselves, and also most useful, both subjectively as mental 
disciplines, and objectively as conditions of an ulterior progress in 
knowledge, merit pre-eminent encouragement in the fundamental 



734 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

faculty of a University : there are other departments, which it is 
proper that a University should, in a lower degree, promote; 
care being taken, that the minor favour shown to the latter, do 
not interfere with the higher favour due to the former. All the 
studies not the necessary conditions of a degree are to be 
excluded from its higher distinctions ; and this by the admission 
of a University itself. Thus Oxford, in leaving (rightly, I have 
said,) Mathematics to be taken up or not for examination, as the 
candidate may himself think fit, virtually confesses, that as a 
mathematical minimum is not a requisite for its degree, so a 
mathematical proficiency is not an attainment to be distinguished 
by its highest honours. For, (as a selection must be rigorously 
made,) a University ought not to encourage by its chief distinc- 
tion a science which it does not view as of absolute necessity ; 
since thus it would frustrate even its own end, by promoting the 
unessential at the expense of the essential. This must, in fact, tend 
to frustrate even the honour itself. For the competitors would 
be few, the standard low, and the distinction consequently under- 
valued. And of what account are the mathematical honours in 
Oxford, we have already seen. It may, indeed, be doubted, 
whether, in that University, these honours do not operate as much 
in counteracting the study of Literse Humaniores, as in promoting 
the discipline for which they were exclusively organised. 

On this special ground, (and independently of the general pro- 
priety of the measure,) Mathematics ought, in Oxford, to be 
relegated to that lower order of sciences, proficiency in which 
should entitle a candidate to honour certainly, but to honour 
decisively inferior in degree to that awarded to excellence in the 
sciences comprised in the higher. Beside, therefore, the superior 
studies, in which a certain minimum of progress is necessary for 
an academical degree, and to the various pitches of proficiency in 
which, the various amounts of highest academical honour are due : 
a University may, further, reasonably require, as a condition of 
its degree, a certain competency in some one or more of certain 
inferior studies, and it may also reward any greater progress in 
these, by an inferior honour. Of this order are many branches 
of knowledge which, as easier and more attractive, do not require 
external promotion, or which, as less useful, subjectively and 
objectively, do not, by comparison, deserve it. Of this order are 
all " the schools" in the new Oxford statute, with the exception 
of the Litcne Humaniores; these ought not. I think, to appear 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 735 

here at all. But to this secondary order of alternatively optional 
studies, about which, as less essential, we need be less scrupulous, 
I would add a certain mastery of the principal modern languages. 
For, assuredly, the candidate who is able to follow out his pur- 
suits, without impediment, through French, German, Italian, &c, 
is less unworthy of a degree, than the candidate who, ignorant of 
these tongues, still passes for the minimum, or even obtains an 
honour in some of the secondary departments. 

But again : A University, like Oxford, which employs Tutorial 
instruction, and consequently limits the academical study of the 
pupil to a determinate series of approved books, has, at its dis- 
posal, certain powerful means of ensuring and ascertaining the 
proficiency of candidates for a degree ; and should these remain 
unapplied, the University may justly be reproached for neglecting 
or for not understanding the peculiar advantages of its peculiar 
system. 

The first of these advantages — is the capability, in so far as 
that may be expedient, of regulating the order of academical 
Study. The objects of this study are not all, are not even for 
the most part, isolated from each other. Many stand in consecu- 
tion. Certain subjects, certain books, can only be profitably 
studied after others. A University, like Oxford, can therefore 
usefully prescribe, not only, in general, that the higher shall 
always presuppose the lower ; but articulately, what are the sub- 
jects, and what the books, which ought to be consecutively studied. 
This is even a duty for such a University ; and the series being 
once promulgated, there is no hardship on the candidate for a 
degree in being subsequently obliged to accommodate his reading 
to the proper order of study. Such a regulation, though it ought 
not, of course, to be carried beyond certain bounds, will naturally 
cause the greater number of the books given up by candidates to 
be the same ; and this identity, in the object matter of examina- 
tion, will render it, as we shall see. a very easy problem to ascer- 
tain with the minutest accuracy the comparative proficiency of 
examinees. 

The second of these advantages — is, that the books of study 
and examination being limited, these Books can be comparatively 
rated ; that is, a determinate value, (to be expressed therefore by 
a certain number,) may be publicly assigned to each. If a candi- 
date answer the questions proposed to him on any book, all and 
all fully, he would naturally be entitled to the whole number at 



733 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (Q. 

which the book is rated. Should a candidate fall short of this 
completeness and accuracy, the value of his answers could be 
expressed by any smaller number, down even to zero ; nay, if it 
were requisite, a negative number might punish his presumption, 
and fall to be deducted from any positive amount which he might 
otherwise obtain. Did the answers transcend simple plenitude 
and correctness, a number above the full value of the book might, 
but only as an extraordinary exception, be allowed. — I need hardly 
add, that a book may have a value in more than one department ; 
it may, for example, avail, and variously, in Humane Letters, or 
in Philosophy, or in both. A separate estimate should therefore 
be assigned to it in reference to each. 

The third of these advantages — is, that the several Classes can 
be determinately valued, and this value with great utility, publicly 
made known. The several books being articulately rated ; and 
the rule, by which their amount can be made available by candi- 
dates, being understood ; it follows, even as a matter of course, 
that the University should state the amounts — the numbers, 
which being attained in a certain department, would entitle to its 
several classes. 

The fourth of these advantages — is, that instead of leaving them, 
as at present, unarranged, we might have Candidates of the same 
class placed therein before and after other, according to the rated 
value of their examinations ; nay, if numbers were affixed to 
names, the men of one class and of one examination might be 
brought into collation with those of another. Were this arrange- 
ment, indeed, realized in the case of First Classes alone, still would 
the principal advantage of the measure be compassed. For it is 
only in a First Class that signal risings of individual above indi- 
vidual are possible ; but for a University, without necessity, to 
equalise such differences, is, if not unjust, certainly inexpedient. 
In this respect Louvain and even Cambridge may afford a profit- 
able example to Oxford. 

The fifth advantage — is, that there might thus be one Honour 
and a double Examination. It would be a great improvement if 
the object-matter of examination could be taken up in, at least, 
one instalment ; and this persuasion seems to have determined the 
views of the Oxford legislature, in recently dividing the examina- 

O I/O 

tion for Literal Humaniores and Disciplines Mathematicce into 
two. But, as already stated, I cannot but regard their division 
of the honour along with the examination as most unfortunate ; 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 737 

though, indeed, not having adopted such subordinate measures as 
have now been detailed, it would, for them, have been impossible 
to render a double trial available to a single classification. I say, 
that it is expedient to divide the Examination : and this, were it 
only that the candidate might be more accurately and fairly tried ; 
while less superiority would accrue to the merely animal advan- 
tages of a stronger memory and of stronger nerves. The single 
prerequisite of this would be, — that the value of the first examina- 
tion were noted, preserved, and added to the value of the second. 

The sixth advantage — is, that the Examination might be ren- 
dered at once far more accurate and far more easy. A large pro- 
portion of the candidates would give up the same book. To these, 
called into the " schools" together, a series of questions prepared 
and printed for the occasion, might be proposed ; and the (unassist- 
ed) answers returned in writing before leaving the room. These 
answers being perused by the Examiners, each paper could be 
rated at its value, and that value placed to the credit of the can- 
didate. In this manner the trial would in a great measure be 
easily and accurately gone through. (There is no reason, it may 
be observed, why the examination of candidates should be com- 
pleted in consecutive days ; nor need an examination in writing- 
supersede any oral questioning.) 

Such a standard, as these last five advantages suppose to be 
accurately instituted and accurately applied, Oxford does not 
attempt ; but leaves it to each of her transient Examiners to 
extemporise a criterion for himself, or rather to classify candidates 
as he may, according to his individual lights, and temporary 
impressions. That Universities in general do nothing more, is an 
invalid answer. For the Universities, in which the Professorial 
or unrestricted system of instruction prevails, can at best only 
lavish degrees according to a rude appraisement ; and are wholly 
unable (what indeed they right rarely attempt) to classify candi- 
dates, even in the vaguest or most capricious manner. Oxford, 
therefore, in adopting the Tutorial or restricted system of instruc- 
tion, should, in tolerating its peculiar disadvantages, be able to 
turn its peculiar advantages to account. — But to conclude : I am 
therefore, convinced, that it would be no ordinary improvement 
on the late Oxford Examination Statute, if, prospectively, a regu- 
lation were adopted, in principle at least, to the following effect : 

Two several Orders of Study to be requisite for examination 
towards a degree in Arts ; and in these the gradations of profi- 
ciency to be rewarded by two several Orders of academical Honour, 

3 a 



738 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

The first or superior order to have two Departments, to wit. 
Humane Letters and Philosophy. Certain lowest competencies, 
in both of these, to be necessary for a degree ; whilst, in each, (as 
now,) a higher proficiency to merit the honour of a corresponding 
class, if not, moreover, (by a more accurate arrangement,) indivi- 
dual rank among the candidates similarly classified. The Classes 
of honour, as hitherto, may, in each department, be three or four. 

The second or inferior order may comprehend an indefinite 
number of departments, — departments at least which it is not 
here necessary to specify. From the candidate (as in the pro- 
spective statute,) should be required a minimum in one depart- 
ment, if not in more, which, however, may be chosen by himself : 
and the honour of a corresponding class to be assigned, as at pre- 
sent, to every higher proficiency in the several departments. 

Care, however, should be taken, to mark, and that obtrusively, 
the difference between the honours belonging to the Orders of the 
absolutely necessary, and of the partially optional, studies. This 
might be done, by maintaining the two orders and their examina- 
tions sufficiently distinct, by the following or other differences, 
(the two first of which are employed, but that inadequately, in the 
recent Statute) : 1°, Distinction of Time ; the higher order pre- 
ceding the lower, as its condition. 2°, Distinction of Examiners : 
different individuals being, for each order, appointed to this func- 
tion. 3°, Distinction of Object Matter ; no department of the prior 
order being repeated in the posterior. 4°, Distinction of Name : 
the one order being called by Primary, the other by Secondary. 
or some such discriminative appellation. 

Before the examination of the Primary Order can be under- 
gone, three full courses, three Academical Years (p. 720,) to be 
completed ; and this examination, for honours at least, must be 
taken within a year thereafter. The examination of the Secondary 
Order, at least for honours, should in like manner be limited to a 
certain period. 

As enacted by the new Statute, the names of all, whether 
honoured or not, to be published under the department in which 
they pass. 

Taking, finally, a general retrospect of the preceding scheme 
of academical education, this is seen to comprise various utilities. 

It would restore the University. It would bring back acade- 
mical education to its true and ancient significance ; reconnecting 
the Houses and their private instruction with the University and 
its public discipline. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 739 

It loses none of the advantages in the present domestic or 
tutorial system, but would correct the manifold imperfections of 
that system, as actually applied. For it would determine a far 
higher efficiency ; making, at the same time, that efficiency secure 
and general : whereas the lower efficiency, as at present fur- 
nished, is not only contingent but rare, not only limited but con- 
fined to a few. As things now are, one House may be an instru- 
ment of education, comparatively real ; and others, such instru- 
ments only in name; nay, even in the same House, study may be 
in vigorous activity at one time, at another in supine inertion. 
But this scheme, if realized, would allow — no House to fall educa- 
tionally asleep, — no Head to gratify his personal preferences at 
the expense of his official obligations, — no incompetent Tutor to 
hide his obstructive nullity in the obscurity of Hall or College. 
For, while it would elevate the Tutor from a private into a public 
instructor ; in raising his dignity and emolument, it would raise 
also his qualifi cations, usefulness, and duties. 

It commits in a beneficial contest, ( u KyaOq B' j%a «lf3e fyoroloi") 
House with House, Tutor with Tutor, Pupil with Pupil ; applies 
equably the stimulus of emulation to all, from the commencement 
of the academical curriculum until its termination. It opens, in fact, 
a new field of exercise and excitation ; leaving no one to inertion, 
be he teacher or be he taught, but goading each unceasingly to 
the best, — according to his kind of duty, and in proportion to 
the measure of his powers. 

Restoring, it would constrain the University : — to employ its 
instructors in the most edifying ways ; — to propose, not what can 
most conveniently be taught, but the best objects, in the best 
order, and in the best books ; — to measure accurately the amount 
of energetic talent usefully employed ; — and to reward this, by 
proportionate and appropriate distinction. 

Far, therefore, from superseding the Examination for a Degree, 
it would prepare the candidate, subjectively and objectively, to 
undergo it ; enabling him to remedy his defects, and rendering it 
a more effectual and certain test of his proficiency. 

I should now proceed to the consideration of — 

b) Tilings secondary or supplemental. But matters princi- 
pal have extended to such a length, that I must not enter upon 
others which, though of importance only as conditions of the 
former, could not possibly be discussed within a narrower com- 
pass. — Of these there are two, more especially meriting attention, 
but to which I can onlv allude. 



740 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

The first — is a scheme of academical Patronage and Regulation, 
accommodated to the circumstances of the English Universities, 
more proximately of Oxford. And here, beside the subject in its 
more essential relations, it would be requisite to consider the 
impediments which an improved regulation of these schools would 
inevitably encounter from parties — in the Universities themselves, 
— in the Church and its patrons, — in the Government for the 
time, — and in various influential interests throughout the nation ; 
impediments so great and numerous, that we may regard almost 
as chimerical, the hope of seeing these institutions raised to the 
perfection, implied in a due accomplishment of the great ends for 
which they were established. In fact, my suggested plan of 
improvement for Oxford, was partly founded on a conviction, that 
a tutorial instruction depends less, for its efficiency, on the virtues 
of an academical superintendence and appointment, than does a 
professorial. (On these virtues see pp. 348-385.) 

The second — is a scheme for the erection of new Halls. This 
would be a return, in part, to the ancient custom of the University ; 
and must inevitably take place, were an increased resort of stu- 
dents determined to Oxford, — unless, what we need not contem- 
plate, domestic superintendence should here, (as in Cambridge,) 
be relaxed, for the pecuniary interest of the existing Houses. New 
Halls should be erected : — 1°, to supply additional demand for 
entrance ; 2°, to prevent or remedy a slovenly tuition in the older 
Houses ; 3°, to keep down (independently of more direct mea- 
sures) the expense of the Colleges, and to afford a cheaper educa- 
tion to the poorer students ; 4°, to accommodate dissenters, were 
they, without a surrender of their principles, admitted for educa- 
tion to these national seminaries, (pp. 473 sq., 519 sq.) ; and 5°, 
to remunerate, in their Headships especially, academical zeal and 
ability. — Of course the new Halls should be of a better constitu- 
tion than the old. 

The other measures under this head, as — a general taxation of 
the necessary collegial expenses, — the means of remunerating the 
academical instructors, — of retaining talent in the University, — 
and of pensioning emeriti, — libraries, — musea, &c. ; these, however 
important, I can at present only name. 



ADDENDA, COKEIGENDA, 



INDEX. 



3b 



' 



ADDENDA. 



P. 12, 1. 11 from bottom, insert the following note : — Schelling.* — 

* [But not alone by Schelling. For of previous philosophers, several 
held substantially the same doctrine. Thus Plotinus : — "Etrrt li to S» 
euepyetot' ^aJKKov H rot, oLft(p&) h. Mioc psi/ ovv <pv<rig, to ts ov, o re vovg' 
§/o Kott tx oi/roc. Kxl v} rov ourog Wi^yuot, koci 6 vovg 6 TOiovrog' kc&i ccl 
ovra voqaetg, to silos, Koti v) ^og<P«J tov ourog, kou i] hs^ystoc k. t. A. (Enn. 
V. 1. ix. c. 8.)] 

P. 30, 1. 13, insert the following note :— other * — 

* [The first three cases had, indeed, been realised in the Eleatic school 
alone. The first by Parmenides, the second by Melissus, the third by 
Xenophanes. The fourth has not, I presume, been explicitly held by 
any philosopher ; but the silent confusion of the Absolute and Infinite 
has been always common enough.] 

P. 50, to end of note : — [Some, however, of the Greek commentators on 
Aristotle, as I have elsewhere observed, introduced the term *lw<*,io$wt<;, 
employing it, by extension, for consciousness in general.] 

P. 120, insert before 1. 13 from bottom : — Joseph Scaliger also testifies to 
the nativity of his friend Duncan, in Scotland, and, apparently in the 
west of Scotland. Speaking of the Gaelic, he says : — " qua in Scotia? 
occidentalibus (unde Duncanus et Buchananus sunt oriundi) .... utun- 
tur." (Prima Scaligerana, voce Britones.) — Scaliger, I may notice, had 
resided for some time in Scotland. 

P. 237, at end. — The preceding letter, though I always prized it as exceed- 
ingly curious, is, I find, far more curious than I had ever surmised. — 
Helius Eobanus Hessus (to say nothing more of Reuchlin) is known to all 
versed in the history of the Restoration of Letters, and history of the 
Reformation of the Church, as one of the most remarkable characters of 
that remarkable period. He was the admired of Erasmus and of Luther, 
the bosom friend of Hutten, Crotus, Buschius, Melanchthon, and Came- 
rarius, indeed, more or less intimately connected with almost all the many 
men of note by whom Germany, during the first half of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, was so conspicuously illustrated. In an age — in a country where 
Latin so totally superseded the vernacular, Eobanus was the Poet of the 
Reformation, and, with Melanchthon and Camerarius, its chief Liter ator. 
He is called by Erasmus the Ovid, by Camerarius the Homer, of Ger- 
many ; and his translation of the Psalter was even more popular than 
his Homeric version, or his Ovidian imitations. Of his Psalms, there are 
known more than forty editions. As a poet, Eobanus remained during 

3 c 



744 ADDENDA. 

his life un approached in Germany ; audit was not till after his death, that 
Lotichius, and long after it, that Balde, came to share with, if not to 
wrest from, him the Elegiac and the Lyric laurels. 

But why was he called the King? — In reading the Letters of Eobanus, 
of which we have two collections, by his two friends, Camerarius and Draco, 
in reading the Letters of his friends Camerarius and Melanchthon, — and 
in reading the Life of Eobanus by Camerarius (to say nothing of the 
many subsequent biographers of the poet,) we encounter perpetual allu- 
sions to the title of King ; the title, in fact, which Eobanus assumed him- 
self, (but, in joke, as " Rex Stultorum") and with which he was almost 
uniformly decorated by his more intimate correspondents. He sometimes 
dates his epistles, indeed, " ex Regia Egestosa ;" and his Queen, he once 
informs a correspondent, had ceased to amplify the royal family, — " non 
quia vetula sit, sed quia nolit ; dicit enim satis Regulorum." The royal 
pair had only a single Princess (Reginula). Thus Luther, (in 1530,) 
sending to the poetic translator of the Psalms his own humbler prose Ger- 
man version of the cxviii., writes : — "]\ T am poe'tae nolo ullo modo com- 
parari, sicut nee debeo nee possum. Tu enim rex poe'tarum, et po'eta 
regum, seu, rectius dicam, regius poeta et poeticus rex es, qui regium 
ilium poe'tam sic pulchre refers in peregrina sibi lingua." (De Wette, iv. 
138.) Eobanus, too, had received the royal title long before he was 
recognised, in then temulent Germany, as the very Prince of Topers ; his 
only rival in this supremacy being, as we are informed by Melanchthon, 
the poet's patron and territorial liege-lord, the magnanimous Landgrave 
of Hesse. So much I kuew. — A few days, however, after the preceding 
letter of Reuchlin had been printed, in looking, for another matter, through 
the Farragines Operum of Eobanus, I stumbled on a poem, previously 
overlooked, articulately explaining the origin of the poet's regal style; 
and found, that this same letter constituted the very imperial patent of 
creation, and was not, as I had deemed it, one merely among the many 
ordinary recognitions of his royal rank. I have likewise subsequently ob- 
served, that Camerarius in his Life of Eobanus (followed by Adamus 
and others,) attributes to Reuchlin the coronation of Eobanus.— Referring 
again to the letter of Eobanus in answer to Reuchlin's, I find the follow- 
kag allusion to the matter in question :— M Ego autem quod reliquum est. 
mi Reuchline, puto me tibi permagnam debere gratiam, et certe non fallor, 
quod genti meae tam antiquum, et quasi ex chao, attnleris prasconium, et 
regem me, alludente voce gentilicia, salutas. Rex igitur sum ego, sed 
admodum parvo contentus regno. Quanto tu asseris, id esset vel Impe- 
ratori nimium." — The verses (which here follow,) are from the second 
book of the Syhce; and though the Farragines were first published during 
the life of the poet, (1539,) they are not accurately printed. 

"Cur vocetur REX. 

Non ego crediderim citius, prodisse poe'tam 

Quern sterilis rap turn prajdicat Ascra senem ; 
Quam mihi jamdudum Phoebseia signa fereuti. 

Yenit adoptato nomine Regis honor. 



ADDENDA, 745 

Hoc tameu imde feram, qua uianet origine nomen, 

Stultum et ridiculuni dieere pene fuit. 
Scripsiinus exiguo vulgata poeuiata versu, 

Scripta notis populo Lypsia clara dedit.* 
Legerat hrec gentis Reuchlinus fama Suevae, 

Et dixit :— " Regis nomen habere potes. 
Inter enim quoscunque ferunt tua secula vates, 

Rex es, et est ratio nominis inde tui : 
Nam Graii Regem dicunt Hessena poetse, 

Esse ita te Regem, nomine reqne doces ; 
Et velut exerces agnatum in carmina regnnm, 

Recta stat in versu syllaba quaaque tuo."t 
Hoc scriptum % excipiunt atque amplexantur amici, 

Et Regem clamant omnibus esse locis. 
Ipse ego quandoquidem nee publica scripta negare, 

Nee poteram charis obstruere ora viris : 
" Rex," inquam, " Rex vester ero, quando ista necesse est 

Tradita militias nomina ferre mese. 
Verum alios titulos, nee inepta insignia sumam, 

Moria jamdudum cognita tota mihi est.§ 
Vidimus Utopia? latissima regna superba?.|| 

Tecta Lucernarum sunt peragrata mihi.^f 
Fortunata meo lustrata est Insula cursu, 

Dulcia ubi seterno flumine mella fluunt. 
Qua viret ambrosise succus, qua rupibus altis 

Nectara, ut e ccelo, prsecipitata cadunt.** 
Gentis Hyperborean felicem vidimus oram, 

Qua neque mors hominum nee mala fata premunt. 
Qua stant perpetuam facientia stagna juventam, 

Qua licet in eceluni scandere quando libet.ft 
Hsac per et haec circum pulcherrima regna volentem, 

Moria me fida duxit arnica manu ; 

* The first edition of the Heroides Christiana} was published at Leipsic, in 
1514, Eobanus being then in his twenty-fifth year. — Does Eobanus in the first two 
verses refer to a recognition by him of Reuchlin's poetical genius in 1514 ? 
Reuchlin's Scenica Progymnasmata were republished, in that year, at Leipsic ; 
and probably the letter of Eobanus to Reuchlin, to which the latter in his epistle 
here printed alludes, contained an acknowledgment to the effect, with special 
reference to that famous comedy. Reuchlin's coronation of Eobanus was thus 
only a reciprocity for Eobanus's laureation of Reuchlin. 

f This is a very accurate abstract of Reuchlin's letter, here printed from the 
autograph, and for the first time. 

+ Thus in a writing, and not in conversation. 

§ Erasmus, by his Encomium Morice, had, in a certain sort, brought Folly into 
fashion. 

|| See the Utopia of Sir Thomas More. 

f Lucian's True History (i. 29,) ? 

** The Fortunate Islands, or Islands of the Blessed, need no illustration. 

ft He refers principally to Pindar, (Pyth. x. 57, sq.) 



746 ADDENDA. 

C unique peragrariin tot tantaque regna, licebit 

Stultitia3 titulos sum ere jure mihi. 
Musica legitimum sumant in carmina regnum, 

Qui sunt Maeonidae, Virgiliique super ; 
Quam mihi sint nullaa scribenda in carmina vires 

Sentio, et ingenium metior inde meum. 
Vos, quia me Regem facitis, sinite esse tyrannum, 

Stultitiae haud aliud me diadema movet." 
Sic ego. — Paruerant illi tarn vera monenti, 

Tradentes manibus Regia sceptra meis. 
Fecerit ergo licet Reuchlinia littera Regem, 

Non tamen hoc tantum contulit imperium. 
Plurima Capnioni subscribit turba : — Quid inde ? 

Si rem complebunt nomina, Csesar ero." 

P. 325, 1. 18 from bottom, add the following : — (Dr Whewell's errors, upon 
this and other kindred points, are refuted with great acuteness by the 
Rev. Mr Mansel of St John's, Oxford, in his valuable work just published, 
entitled — " Prolegomena Logica ; an Inquiry into the Psychological cha- 
racter of Logical Processes." See Note A and pp. 77, sq.) 

P. 380, 1. 4 insert the following note : — erudition ; * 

* [See p. 335, sq. — Even the one, to which the two exceptions are here 
reduced, is, I am sorry to find, hardly valid. For " the Harmony of the 
Gospels " by Dr Macknight, (and to him I alluded,) was, indeed, translated 
into Latin and printed at Bremen in 1777 ; but the author, I see, had 
studied in the great classical school of Leyden.] 

P. 407, 1. 1. from bottom, insert : — [The previous suspicion is, I am now 
convinced, unfounded.] 

P. 629, 1. 13 : — insert : — ; finally, 6°, if the judges were made to act under the 
obligation of an oath. 

P. 648*, 1. 31, insert, as a new paragraph, the following : — I should notice, 
likewise, that logical authors have confused themselves and readers, in 
attempting to expound the mystery of modal inference. Yet nothing, 
when properly evolved, can be simpler or plainer.— Determine the mode 
of the propositions in question ; and then their consecution, as modes, is 
simply the consecution of these modes, as genera and species, proceeding 
(usefully, at least) — in affirmation upwards and partially, — in negation 
downwards and totally. See the Tables, pp. 644*, 647*. 

aomeonaa; 



CORRIGENDA. 



P. 20, 1. 7 from bottom, read : — " God is the life of the soul, as the soul is 

the life of the body." 
P. 21, 1. 8, read :— 

" And Naught is ev'ry thing, and ev'ry thing is Naught." 
P. 22, 1. 13, read :— W< 
P. 39, 1. 17, read:—" the hunter of truth." 
P. 103, 1. 7, read:—" Reason." 

P. 121, at end of note, read :— 1850, and p. 621* sq., below. 
P. 155, 1. 13 from bottom, read: — 1. a) 
P. 163, at end of note insert :— See p. 639* sq. 
P. 195, 1. 26, read :— why he should not. 
P. 199, 1. 2 from bottom, read : — te came latebal, 
P. 213, 1. 10 from bottom, read : — Ecclesiastiques, and Basnage in his His- 

toire des Juifs, 
P. 221, 1. 10, read :— Panzer, Lobstein and Genthe. — But Duchat, C. G. 

Mueller 
lb. 1. 18, read : — Hamelmann, followed by Reimann and Placcius, 
lb. 1. 16 from bottom, read :— Crotum," and herein he is followed by Floegel, 
P. 237, 1. 4 from bottom, read :— nugivendis 
P. 253, 1. 10 from bottom, read : — Homoeopathy 
lb. 1. 14 from bottom, read : — ikr(%v 
P. 274, 1. 2 from bottom, read :— = philosophy 
P. 314, 1. 11, read : — ourselves. [Editor.] 
P. 320, 1. 17 from bottom, read :— so"?] 
P. 368, 11. 1 and 3 from bottom, read : — Michaelis 
P. 407, 1. 1 from bottom, read : — former, 
P. 491, 1. 22 from bottom, read : — aught 
lb. 1. 2 from bottom, read : — [In regard 
P. 493, 1. 10 from bottom, read : — Anglican Churchmen 
P. 494, 1. 13 from bottom, read : — commencement.] 
lb. 1. 12 from bottom, read : — [Mr Hare's 
P. 495, 1. 20 from bottom, delete : — as a whole 
P. 496, last line, read : — Luther.] 
P. 501, 1. 16 from bottom, read :— p. 59, 3d Ed. 
P. 504, 1. 18 from bottom, read :— where, as neither in the preceding, does 

he enable 
P. 581, 1. 11, read :— Time is positively 
P. 594, 1. 21, read :— referrible 



748 CORRIGENDA. 

P. 597, 1. 23, read : — less obtrusive 

P. 614, Title, read :— (A) OF, &c. (So in heading of pp. 616, 618, 620.) 

P. 632*, 1. 10, read:— /) A r - 1 — 

P. 634*, 1. 17, read :— By « denial," 
P. 643* 1. 12, read :— " Newton is not Leibnitz." 
P. 645, 1. 9 from bottom, read : — Privilegia 
P. 647*, 1. 11, read : — Propositional Modes 
P. 672, 1. 26, read :— unto himself 

There are some inaccuracies noticed of the Greek accentuation, in pp. 26, 
35, 84, 154, 388, but these it is not worth articulately to correct. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, the : {see Unconditioned) ; 
meanings of term, 13 ; as contrasted, 
and as convertible, with Infinite, 13 ; 
used by Cardinal Cusa, 605 ; Absolute 
Identity, 54. 

A, E, I, O, (the logical symbols) of La- 
tin origin, 126 ; and taken from the 
first two vowels of Aflirmo, and the 
first and second of Nego, 631*. 

Agrippa (Cornelius), his counsel touch- 
ing a reform of the University of Co- 
logne, 458. 

Aldrich (Dean), his Logics Compen- 
dium, 123, 137, 138, 141, 148, 149, 
168, 718. 

Algebra. See Mathematics. 

Alphabet of Thought, Table of, &c, 
577, sq. 

Altdorf, University of, 374, 483. 

Apocalypse, opinions regarding its ca- 
nonicity, 506. 

Archytas, the treatise on the Categories 
under his name a forgery, 138. 

Aristotle : his Categories exclude the Un- 
conditioned, 25, not borrowed, 138, 
metaphysical, 139 ; his merits in re- 
gard to Logic, ib. ; his logical system 
not perfect, 140; text in his Ethics 
emended, 268 ; apparently anticipates 
the doctrine of the Conditioned, 602 ; 
character of his writings, 682 ; on ne- 
cessity of philosophical study, 695; 
quoted passim. 

Assurance, Special Faith, &c, in earlier 
Protestantism, the condition and cri- 
terion of a true Faith, now generally 
surrendered, 493; held by English 
and Irish Churches, but not by their 
Churchmen, 493 ; this return towards 
Catholicism unnoticed, 493, 494. 

Augustin (Saint), his conciliation of free 
grace and free will, 598 ; quoted pas- 
sim. 

Austin (Mrs), 535. 



Balfour (Robert), his character as a 
philosopher and logician, 119. 

Balliol College, Oxford, its academical 
eminence, 659, sq. 

Barbara, Celarent, &c, of Latin origi- 
nal, and not borrowed from the Greek ; 
probably by Petrus Hispauus, 126. 

Barbarism of mind, and a knowledge of 
facts, compatible, 39-41, 690. 

Baynes (Mr Thomas Spencer), 163. 

Benson (Mr Robert), Memoirs of Col- 
lier, 190. 

Berkeley (Bishop), an unknown treatise 
by, 187. 

Bernard (Saint), his conciliation of free 
grace and free will, 598 ; quoted plu- 
ries. 

Blemmidas, his Greek words for mood 
and figure taken from the Latin Bar- 
bara, Celarent, &c, 126. See 631*. 
| Boerhaave (Herrmann), 254. 
i Boole (Prof.), 273. 
I Bossuet's accuracy vindicated, 493. 
: Breadth and Depth of notions. See 

Logic. 
! Broun (Mr James), 117. 

Brown (Dr Thomas), his philosophy of 
Perception, 42-97 ; his series of mis- 
takes, ib. ; results of his doctrine, 94 ; 
his doctrine of Causality, 586, 590. 

Bucer (Martin), his character, 498. 

Bursa, the name by which an authorised 
House for the habitation and superin- 
tendence of academical scholars was 
called in Germany, 407-410. 

Buschius (Hermannus). See Epistolaj 
o. v. 

Butler (Samuel) quoted, on the neces- 
sity of philosophising, 695 ; on the 
fact of consciousness, 62. 



Bacon (Lord) : quoted, as to professorial 
endowments, 693 ; as to the compara- 
tive facility of the inductive and phy- 
sical sciences, 730; et alibi passim. 



Cajetan (Cardinal), his doctrine in re- 
gard to the conciliation of prevision, 
predestination, and free will, 599. 

Calvinism, current representation of, 
erroneous, 600. 

Cambridge University : its forced study 
of Mathematics unimproving to the 
mind, and conducing" to idiocy, mad- 



".30 



INDEX. 



ness, death, 309, 327, 651*, sq. ; why 
so deleterious an exaggeration there 
maintained, 321 ; its Colleges about 
the last seminaries of Europe in which 
the Newtonian physics superseded the 
Cartesian, and why? 309, 322; its 
present study of mathematics con- 
demned by Newton, 306 ; absurdity 
of the recent Examination Graces, 
730 ; its Divines the precursors of the 
German Rationalists and their follow- 
ers, 507, 508. 

Camerarius (Gulielmus), his character 
as a philosopher and logician, 120. 

Canvassing of academical patrons, 374, 
624. 

Cartes (Des) : his employment of the 
word Idea, and his doctrine of Per- 
ception, 68, 70, sq. ; the first of ma- 
thematicians, he despised and re- 
nounced mathematics, 271, sq. ; which 
he soon even wholly forgot, 284 ; 
called his physical philosophy a Ro- 
mance, 296. 

Categorical. See Logic. 

Categories : Aristotelic, 25, 139 ; of 
Thought— by Kant, 16, 27— by Cou- 
sin, 9 — by Author, 17, 577, sq. 

Catholic Italian Universities, their reli- 
gious liberality, 359, 363, 365. 

Causality, notion of: its origin, 585, sq. ; 
relation of, ipso facto, thought as con- 
ditioned, 33, 34; conspectus of the 
various theories for its explanation, 
585, sq. ; explained by a new theory, 
that of the Conditioned, 591, sq. ; 
moral and religious character of this 
theory, 595 sq. 

Causes, always more than one, 585, 594, 
alibi. 

Chevallier (Professor), 257. 

Churches of Germany, England, and 
Scotland, their character, 335-343. 

Church History best or worst of dis- 
ciplines, 491. 

Churchmen, English and Scottish, in 
different ways, have a bad professional 
education, 335-341, 278, sq. ; and the 
worst possible test of competency, 
341. 

Classical learning, its conditions, 328- 
347 ; 1°. a classical training required 
for the three learned professions, 329, 
Law 331, Medicine 333, Theology 333- 
340 ; 2°. efficiency of schools and uni- 
versities, 329, 340-343. 

Collier (Arthur), his Idealism, 186-202 ; 
his life, 191. 

Collins (Anthony), unknown treatise 
by, 187. 

Common Sense, 62, 84, 88, 196. 



Comprehension and Extension of no- 
tions. See Logic. 

Conception. We can conceive or think 
(have a notion or concept of,) what 
we are unable to imagine or represent, 
13 ; but what we represent or ima- 
gine, that we may think or conceive, 
ib. 

Concepts, Notions. See Logic. 

Conditioned (the), philosophy of, 12, sq., 
577, sq. ; converse of the philosophy 
of the Unconditioned, 584 ; probably 
adopted by Aristotle, 602 ; science of 
ignorance, 584; explains Causality, 
&c. 591, sq., eminently religious, 15, 
597, sq., 601, sq. 

Conditions of Thought, table and detail 
of, 577-583. 

Consciousness : only of the limited, 19 ; 
not a special faculty, 46 ; facts of, 
62, 84 ; involves judgment, 583, sq. ; 
Aristotle and the older Greeks, with 
the Romans, until the Latin language 
ceased to be a living tongue, employed 
(with rare exceptions) no psycholo- 
gical term for Consciousness, 50, 110. 

Conversation with the learned, 687, sq. 

Coplestone (Bishop), his confusion of 
the Colleges with the University of 
Oxford, 398, 510 ; various testimo- 
nies by, 399, 400, 433, 662, 703. 

Cosmothetic Idealism, or Hypothetical 
Realism, or Hypothetical Dualism, 55, 
193. 

Coste (Pierre), his explanation of Locke's 
passage touching the creation of mat- 
ter, 201. 

Cousin : his genius and character, 1, 36, 
41 ; his philosophy in general, 1-37 ; 
advocate of Rationalism, 7 ; his doc- 
trine of the Infinito- Absolute, 23 ; his 
report on Prussian Schools, 535-573 ; 
his merits as a reformer and promoter 
of Popular Education, 541, 542 ; what 
he has done for France cannot be with- 
out benefit for this and other coun- 
tries, 542 ; his observations on the 
law in France for the instruction of 
the people, 567-572. 

Craniology, fundamentally false, 611. 

Croke (Richard), 210. 

Crotus (Rubianus). See Epistolas o. v. 

Cudworth (Dr Ralph), an unknown 
treatise by, 187 ; on, 303. 

Cullen (Dr William), his character, 238- 
246. 

Cultivation of mind in no proportion to 
the mind's possession of facts, but in 
proportion to its energy, 39-41, 322. 

Curators : plan of academical Patronage 
and Government through them ; by 



INDEX. 



751 



Author, 382 ; by Burgh Commis- 
sioners, 625. 
Cusa or Cusanus (Cardinal), his doc- 
trine of Learned Ignorance, 604 ; from 
this have sprung the modern theories 
of the Absolute, 605 ; this Prince of 
the Church anticipated Copernicus 
and Galileo in the true theory of the 
Heavens, ib. 

Dalgarno (George), his writings, 175- 185. 

Davidson (Dr J. Henry), 635. 

Deaf and Dumb, history of the attempts 
at their education, 176-185 ; the tes- 
timonies by, or in relation to, of Agri- 
cola (R.) 177, Aristotle 177, Bacon 

180, Bonnet (P.) 178, Bulwer (J.) 

181, Dalgarno 182, Digby (Sir K.) 
178, Epee (Abbe de 1') 182, Fabri- 
cius ab Aquapendente, 180, Galen 

177, Holder 181, Lana 180, Molinseus 
(the jurist) 177, Montanus (P.) 180, 
Pontius (P.) 178, Robertson (Father) 
181, Stewart (D.) 182, VaUesius (F.) 

178, Vives 178, Wallis 180. 
Degree or Intension, as a condition of 

thought, 583. 

De Morgan (Prof.) as a logical critic 
and reasoner, 621*-652*. 

Depth and Breadth of notions. See Logic. 

Des Cartes. See Cartes. 

Dialectic. See Logic. 

Disputation, as an exercise of mind, 679, 
sq. 

Dissenters. See Universities, English. 

Doce ut Discas, 345, 685, sq. 

Doubt, the condition of knowledge, 601. 

Dousa (Janus) as Curator of Leyden, 
362, sq, 

Duncan (Mark), his character as a logi- 
cian, &c. 119, sq. 

Durham, u University" of, has no legal 
right to grant Degrees, 477, sq. 



Edinburgh, University of: its defects, 
341, 372-375, 885, 621-644 ; its De- 
grees in Arts, 627, sq, ; in Medicine, 
333, 355, 629, sq. ; how given now, 
639, sq. ; by what means these de- 
grees might be restored to respecta- 
bility, 643. 

Education of Deaf and Dumb. See Deaf 
and Dumb. 

Education of the People. See Popular 
Education. 

Effect and Cause, relation of, thought, 
ipso facto, as conditioned, 33, 34, 
585, sq. 

Empirical. See Experience. 

England : English indifference to philo- 
sophy, 187 ; abuse of the term Philo- 



sophy, 27 L 2, 622* ; national disregard 
of oaths, 454, 527 ; church the crea- 
tion of the civil magistrate, nay of the 
King alone, 336, sq. ; established 
clergy have no professional educa- 
tion, 339, 441, 476 ; English theology 
weak from want of philosophy, and 
could not now be trusted in the threa- 
tened polemic, 699. Universities (see 
Universities) ; popular education the 
worst in Christendom, 539 ; Anglican 
Church holds Assurance, 493. 

Enthymeme. See Logic. 

Eobanus. See Hessus. 

Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum : charac- 
ter and authorship of this satire, 203- 
237 ; its authors three, 227 ; to wit, 
Hutten 223, Crotus 222, and Bus- 
chius 226 ; theories of its authorship, 
220 ; contributed greatly to the Re- 
formation, 215, 216 ; mistakes about, 
219 ; ill-edited by Muench, 233, and 
by Rotermund, 235. 

Eschenbach (Professor), his translation 
of Collier's Clavis, 190. 

Examination as an academical exercise, 
679, sq. 

Examinations for academical degrees : in 
Louvain, 645, sq. ; as academical 
stimulus, in Oxford, 703, 723. 

Exeter Dr Philpotts, (Bishop of), on ad- 
mission of Dissenters to the English 
Universities, 509, sq. 

Existence, as a category of thought, 578. 

Experience, all notions from or empiri- 
cal, which we can think non-existent, 
323, 325, 583. 

Extension. See Space. 

Extension, and Intension or Compre- 
hension of notions. See Logic. 



Faculty of University, what, 481, et alibi. 

Faith, true or saving, formerly, in Pro- 
testantism, implied Assurance or Spe- 
cial Faith, 493. 

First and Second notions, distinction of, 
137. 

Formal and Material, distinction of. 
See Logic. 

French Sensualist philosophy, 2. 

Fries, Astronomy and Fate, Psychology 
and Design, 2u3. 

Fromondus, his statement of a curious 
theory of Perception, 49. 



Gatto (Sig. Lo), Italian translator of 
these Philosophical Discussions, pas- 
sim. 

Gentlemen Commoners, in Oxford and 
Cambridge, a collegial emolument,, 
but an academical nuisance, 721, 



752 



INDEX. 



Geometry. See Mathematics. 

Germans : character of, 203 ; rise of 
classical studies among, 205 ; their 
demoralisation after the Reformation, 
497. 

German : — rational philosophy, 4 ; uni- 
versities, 365-367, 407-410 ; the theo- 
logy less orthodox than the philoso- 
phy, 489 ; schools for the people, 
543-573 ; strong interest in education, 
shown from the number of works on 
that subject published in Germany. 
561. 

God known and unknown, 15 ; a certain 
analogy of Man to God 19 ; to know 
God, we must know ourselves, 696. 

Goettingen, University of, 367. 

Graduates, all have a right to lecture 
publicly in the English Universities, 
391, 447, sq. 

Grotius (Hugo) follows the Scaligers in 
singing the wisdom of a Learned Igno- 
rance, 607. 



Hampden (Bishop), his Aristotle's Phi- 
losophy, 169. 

Hare (Archdeacon) : his counter criti- 
cism, in defence of Luther, considered, 
491-506 ; his knowledge of theology 
and of Luther's writings, with the 
trustworthiness of his statements and 
translations, ib. ; his misapprehen- 
sions and misrepresentations of Bos- 
suet, ib. ; ignorant even of Anglican 
principles, 493, 494, 504 ; attempts to 
defend Luther only on a few points, 
and even on these few has uniformly 
failed, 506. 

Harris (Mr, of Salisbury), 698. 

Hegel : his doctrine of the Absolute, 21, 
23 ; to him the Absolute equal to the 
Nothing, 21 ; refutation of and by 
Schelling, 23 ; his confusion of Con- 
tradictories and Contraries, 24 ; on 
his philosophy, 604, 696. 

Hessus (Helius Eobanus) on, 230, 236 ; 
why called King? See Addenda. 

Hispanus (Petrus) not a Plagiarist, 126. 

Hotfmaun (Frederic), 253 ; his Fuye 
Medicos, ccc, 252. 

Huber (Professor), "The English Uni- 
versities," character of that book, 534. 

Hume, his opinion about mathematical 
truth mistaken by Dr Whcwell, 2G6 : 
despised mathematical study, 266, 305. 

Hutten (Ulrich v.) See Epistolse o.v. 

Hypostasis, term, 608. 

Hypothetical. See Logic. 

Hypothetical Realism, or H. Dualism, 
or Cosmothetie idealism, 5,"), 193. 



Idea, or representative object, 56 ; his- 
tory of the word, 68 ; what in the 
Cartesian philosophy, 70. 

Idealism, its various degrees or species, 
54, 192 ; grounds of, 194 ; why the 
Schoolmen, Mallebranche, and, in 
general, orthodox Catholics, avoided 
this doctrine, 197. 

Ignorantia Docta sumnia sapientia, 36, 
601-6. Testimonies quoted— Anony- 
mus, Arabian Sage, Aristotle, Arno- 
bius, Augustin, Chrysologus, Chry- 
sostom, Cusa, Democritus, Grotius, 
Palingenius, Pascal, Petrarch, Pic- 
colomini (iEneas Sylvius), Pliny, 
Rabbis, the Scaligers, Socrates, Ter- 
tullian, Theodoret, 602-607. See 
Knowledge, Occult Causes. 

Imagination. See Conception. 

Induction. See Logic. 

Infinite, the : (see Unconditioned) ; what 
properly, 13, 21 ; verses on, 37. 

Inglis (Sir Robert Harry, Bart.) on 
admission of Dissenters to English 
Universities, 509, sq. 

Intellectual Intuition, 6 ; of Schelling, 
20 ; in Cusa, 605. 

Intension, or Degree, as a condition of 
thought, 583. 

Intension and Extension of notions. 
See Logic. 

Intuitive (or Present ative) and Repre- 
sentative Knowledge, 51, sq. 

Irish, their scholastic pugnacity, bar- 
barism, and acuteness, 6. 

Italian Universities, their religious libe- 
rality in calling Protestants of learn- 
ing to their chairs, 359, 363, 365. 



Jacobi, noble passage of, on Providence 

and Fate, 302. 
Jenkvns (Very Rev. Dr), as Master of 

Ballioi, 659. 
Johnson (Rev. Arthur) translation of 

Tennemann's Manual, 98-115. 
Judgment involved in Consciousness, 

583, sq. 
Judgments. See Logic. 



Kant : his philosophy, 5 ; his doctrine 
of the Unconditioned, 15; his Cate- 
gories, 16, 27, 144 ; against Com- 
mon Sense, 91 ; his Logical purism, 
143 ; sublime passage from, contrast- 
ing the Moral Law and the Stellar 
Universe, 301 ; on, 697. 

Knowledge : does it imply an analogy 
of Subject and Object? 60 ; of Mind 
and of Matter is only phenomenal or 
relative, 608. Testimonies 1'or this 



INDEX. 



753 



relativity — Albertus Magnus, Aris- 
totle, Averroes, Augustin, Bacon, 
Boethius, Bruno, Campanella, Ger- 
son, Kant, Leo Hebrseus, Melanch- 
thon, Newton (Sir Isaac), Piccolo- 
mini (F.), Scaliger (J. C), Spinoza, 
608-611. See Ignorantia Docta, Oc- 
cult Causes. 



Lambert, his Syllogistic, 649*. 

Law, how far its study supposes classical 
scholarship, 331, sq. ; proposed Prac- 
ticum for, 682. 

Lening (John), his character, 498, 499. 

Leyden, University of, 359-365. 

Liberty moral, doctrine of, 595, sq. 

Locke, his advice to William III. to 
reform the Universities, 457 ; on, 201. 
See Perception. 

Logic : its fortune in Scotland, 117 ; in 
Oxford, 121; in Cambridge, 120; 
in Dublin, 121 ; History of, 138 ; 
what ? 129 ; its derivation, 135 ; 
Abstract, Concrete, 133 ; a Formal 
science, 134, 136, 137, 143 ; Pure 
and Applied, 139, alibi. 

Notions, Simple Terms. — First and 
Second Notions, 137. Categories of 
Aristotle, not a logical distribution, 
139. Breadth or Extension, and 
Depth or Intension or Comprehension, 
171, sq., 641*, sq. Table of, 644.* 

Judgments, Propositions. — Eight 
forms of, 162, 631*, sq. Quantifica- 
tion of the Predicate, 160, 162, 639*. 
Comprehension or Depth, and Exten- 
sion or Breadth, 641*, sq. ; remark- 
able omission of this distinction, 172. 
Affirmation and Negation, counter 
procedure of, 624* sq., 644*; their 
Particularity twofold, 635*, sq. Tables 
of their relations, 632,* 637* 

Reasonings, Syllogisms. — All logi- 
cal inference hypothetical, 144 ; but 
all mediate inference categorical, 615, 
619 ; our Hypothetical syllogisms not 
those of Aristotle, 149 ; Categorical, 
what the different meanings of the 
term, 150; Analytical and Syntheti- 
cal, what ? 6 16, sq. ; Objection of 
Petitio Principii does not apply to the 
Analytical Syllogism, therefore not 
to any, 616 ; Figured and Unfigured, 
what ? 616, sq. ; Argument, what 
properly, 147 ; Ultratotal Quantifica- 
tion of the middle term, 649* ; Order 
of Premises, 645* ; Enthymeme, what 
vulgarly, and what to Aristotle, &c, 
151, sq. ; Deduction, logical, 159, sq. ; 
Induction, logical, its true nature, 



156-173 ; author's one Canon of Syl- 
logism, 615, 617 ; this thoroughgoing, 
without exceptions, 619, 630*. 

Propositions and Syllogisms. — Mo- 
dality of, Extra-logical, or only of an 
Applied Logic, 139, 143, 157, 647*, 
sq. ; what allowable, 146, 647* ; 
Hypothetical propositions and syllo- 
gisms, what and how to be divided, 
148; Quantification of the Predicate in 
propositions and syllogisms, 160, 162, 
639*, sq. ; on this, as the foundation 
of a new Analytic, 614-620; Nota- 
tions, logical, 618, 620, 632* ; should, 
if competent, be able to exhibit the 
thirty-six moods, by thirty-six seve- 
ral diagrams, 620. 

Authors quoted in reference to 
Logic, apart from those reviewed : — 
Agricola 152, Aldrich 138, 141, 
Alexander 154, Ammonius 154, Apul- 
eius 151, Aristo Chins 124, Aristotle 
132, 136, 140, 145, 149, 152, 162, 
171, 172, Averroes 132, Bacon 142, 
Balfour (Robert) 119, Boethius 149, 
151, Browne (Sir Thomas,) 157, Buf- 
fier 131, Cardanus 150, Chalmers or 
Camerarius (William) 120, Coryda- 
leus 153, Cusa (Cardinal) 125, Demp- 
ster (Thomas) 120, Duncan (Mark) 
120, 131, Dupleix 119, Erasmus 117, 
Facciolati 153, Gillies 143, Kirwan 
131, Leibnitz 117, Lovanienses 153, 
Magentinus 154, Majoragius 153, 
Mansel 146, Pachymeres 154, Pacius 
153, 154, Philoponus 154, Phrissemius 
153, Rabbis 139, Ramus 145, 147, 
Saint Hilaire 140, 145, 150, Scaliger 
(Joseph) 117, Scaynus 153, Servetus 
117, Sextus Empiricus 154, Urquhart 
(Sir Thomas) 118, Valla 145, Vives 
131, 145, Vossius (J. G.) 150.— 
Authors only referred to, omitted. 

Louvain, University of, 374, 406, 413, 
483 ; its Examinations, 647, sq. 

Luther : some obnoxious opinions of, 
491-506 ; a mistake in the report of 
his Table-Talk corrected, touching 
Ecclesiastes, 501; his rejection of the 
book of Esther established, 502, 503 ; 
also his rejection of the Epistle of St 
James, 505 ; favourable to Polygamy, 
&c, 497-501; held (originally at 
least) a heterodox opinion in regard 
to the necessity of human action, 
492. 



Maimonides (Moses), quoted touching 

Esther, 503. 
Mallebranche, orMalebranche, his vision 



754 



INDEX. 



of all things in God, whence borrowed, 
199. 

Manilius, verses of, 19. 

Mansel (Rev. H. L.), 126, 633*, 639*, 
718. See Addenda. 

Matter and Material used not in the 
sense of body and bodily, but for that 
circa quod, in quo, and ex quo, 5, 136, 
144. 

Material and Formal, distinction of. 
See Logic. 

Materialism, 54. 

Mathematics, study of: what its utility 
as an exercise of mind, 257-327 ; does 
not educate to a general evolution of 
the faculties ; but, if too exclusively 
pursued, contracts and debilitates the 
mind, 267-313, 651*, sq. ; not a logi- 
cal exercise, 319, sq., 621*, sq. ; only 
difficult because too easy, 281 ; inclines 
to credulity and scepticism, 294 ; to 
the former, 295-298; to the latter, 
298-303 ; generally of little use, and 
soon forgotten, 312 ; relation of to 
Logic, 262 ; Geometric process culti- 
vates the imagination, not the under- 
standing, 276 ; may possibly conduce 
to continuous attention, 303-308 ; but 
other studies better for this, 310; 
Algebraic process, in particular, posi- 
tively deleterious as a mental gym- 
nastic, 305-310. — Authorities and in- 
stances adduced : Albertus Magnus 
276, D'Alembert 271, 282, 288, St 
Ambrose 299, Ammonius Hermise 
276, Arcesilaus 282, Aristo Chius 
282, Aristotle 265, 267, 274, 278, 
281, 284, 312, Arnauld 279, St Au- 
gustin 299, Bacon (Lord) 304, Bacon 
(Roger) 277, 283, Baillet (Adrian) 
271, Barbeyrac 292, Basedow 292, 
Bayle 283, 300, Berkeley 287, 300, 
Bernhardi 268, Boole 273, Buddeus 
291, Cicero 281, Clarendon 291, Le 
Clerc 291, Coleridge 279, Colerus 
281, Condillac 297, Darjes 281, Des- 
cartes 271, 281, Digby (Sir K.) 277, 
Feldenus 292, Fonseca, 279, Fracas- 
torius 276, Fries 303, Gassendi 290, 
Gibbon 293, Goethe 270, S'Grave- 
sande 288, Gregory (Dr John) 300, 
Gundling 300, Du Hamcl 279, 304, 
311, Hipponicus 282, Horrebovius 
281, Huet 281, Hume 266, 305, Huy- 
gens 279, Jacobi 302, St Jerome 299, 
Kant 277, 301, Kepler 297, Kirwan 
293, 310, Klumpp 270, 281, Leibnitz 
279, Leicester 291, Leslie (Sir John) 
266, Lichtenberg281, 288, Monboddo 
300, Morgenstern 269, Newton (Sir 
Isaac) 297, 306, Niemeyer 281, ras- 



cal 286, Pemberton 306, Philoponus 
276, Picus (Joannes) 296, Plato 265, 
303, 312, Poiret 297, 299, Proclus 
265, Proverbs 282, Prussia, Queen 
of, 296, Quarterly Review 809, Salat 
294, Scaliger (Joseph) 283, Scaliger 
(Julius Caesar) 313, Seneca 265, 312, 
Socrates 311, Sorbiere 290, De Stael 
293, 297, 301, 311, Stewart (Dugaldj 
289, 295, 298, 305, Thiersch 307, 
Vico 307, Vives 290, Voltaire 296, 
Walpole (Horace) 293, Warburton 
281, 292, 297, 304, Weidler 281, 
Von Weiller 269, Whiston 297, Wolf 
(Chr.) 281, Wolf (The Philologer) 
283, Xenophon 311, Zwinger 281.— 
Reasoning of mathematicians out of 
mathematics, examples of, 315-327, 
621,*- 652.*— See also 726-731. 

Medical Degrees. See Edinburgh. 

Medicine : on the revolutions of, 246- 
256 ; doubtful whether a blessing or 
a curse, 252; how far it supposes 
scholarship, 333, 635, sq. ; contemned 
by physicians, 252, 638; profession 
of physician in this country now 
requires no liberal learning, 640, sq. 

Meiners, his testimony touching acade- 
mical patronage, 369 ; quoted, 680. 

Melanchthon, quoted : on Examinations, 
679 ; et alibi pluries. 

Melander (Dionysius), his character, 
498. 

Memory, 48. 

Metaphysics. See Philosophy. 

Michaelis, his testimony regarding aca- 
demical patronage, 368. 

Miller (Serjeant), his testimony, 447, 
458, 525. 

Modality, a material affection of the pre- 
dicate (or subject) to be excluded 
from Pure Logic, 139, sq., 143, sq., 
647*, sq. 

Morgan. See De Morgan. 

Muenchhausen (Baron V.) as Curator of 
Goettingen, 367, sq. 

Natural Realism or Dualism, 54. 

Necessitas Consequential et necessitas 
Consequentis, or Formal and Material 
(or Real) Necessity, 144. 

Necessity moral, doctrine of, 395, sq. 

Newton (Sir Isaac) : his unknown theory 
of the creation of Matter, 201 ; educa- 
tionally condemned the algebraic pro- 
cess, 306 ; a religious dreamer, 297. 

Nihilism, 54. 

Non-Natural Subscription, 522. 

Notations, syllogistic. See Logic. 

Nothing, thc,= the Absolute, by what 
Absolutists maintained) 21, 605; in 






INDEX. 



755 



reference to this doctrine, 584, 604, 
696. 
Notions or Concepts. See Logic. 



Oath and Subscription held of light 
account in England, 454. 

Object. See Subject. 

Occult Causes should be recognised, 
611. Testimonies for this — Alste- 
dius, Scaliger (J. C), Voltaire, 612, 
613. See Unconditioned; Know- 
ledge ; Ignorantia Docta. 

Oken, his doctrine of the Absolute, or 
the Nothing, 21. 

Oxford : legal and illegal, 389, sq. 441, 
445, 670 ; that University still main- 
tains the principle of encouraging solid 
erudition, 343 ; therefore with its 
mighty means the most capable of 
being raised to the highest, 343, 387 ; 
Testimonies to its former abject state, 
424, 668 ; Table of its Houses in the 
order of their efficiency as educational 
organs, 654, 655; these Houses so 
compared, 653-667, 700 ; as it is, 651 
sq. ; as it might be, 671 sq. ; Examina- 
tion Statutes. See Universities English. 



Padua, University of, 357. 

Paris, University of, 404-406. 

Parr (Rev. Dr), his reprint of Collier, 
&c, 187. 

Pascal, passage of, explained, 607. 

Patronage of Universities, See Univer- 
sity Patronage. 

Peacock (Dean), his testimony, 419, 534. 

Pearson (George, B.D., Christian Ad- 
vocate of Cambridge), his objections 
to the admission of Dissenters into 
the English Universities considered, 
486, sq. ; his knowlege of German 
Theology, ib. 

Peisse (M.), the able French translator 
of these Philosophical Discussions, his 
notes, passim. 

Perception : philosophy of, 49-97 ; dif- 
ferent meanings of the term, 75 ; 
testimonies quoted touching, (beside 
Reid and Brown), — Alexander Aph- 
rodisiensis 50, Aristotle 41, 50, 69, 
88, Arnauld 72, 74, 75, Bacon 41, 45, 
Berkeley 90, Brucker 81, Buchanan 
(David) 68, Clarke (Dr Samuel) 79, 

81, Le Clerc 79, 80, Cousin 39, Crou- 
saz 83, Descartes 70, 90, Digby (Sir 
Kenelm) 79, Durandus 52, Fichte 91, 
De la Forge 71, Fromondus 49, Geno- 
vesi 79, 82, Goclenius 68, S'Grave- 
sande 82, Hesiod 84, Hobbes 73, 
Hook 79, Hume 90, Jacobi 91, Kant 

82, 91, Leibnitz 52, 67, 75, 81, 82, 



Lessing 39, Locke 77, Lucretius 62, 
69, 84, Mallebranche or Malebranche 
72, 81, 90, Melanchthon 68, Michael 
Ephesius 50, Nemesius 50, Newton 
(Sir Isaac) 79, Norris 60, Philoponus 
50, Plato 39, 50, Plotinus 83, Plu- 
tarchus Atheniensis 50, Roel 72, 
Royer-Collard 72, 83, Scaliger (Ju- 
lius Caesar) 40, 68, Schelling 90, Ser- 
geant 78, Simplicius 50, Tennemanii 
90, Tertullian47, Themistius 50, Tho- 
masius (Christian) 82, Tucker 78, 
Voltaire 82, De Vries 72, Willis 79, 
Wolf 71, 75, 82. 

Perjury, testimonies touching, of Au- 
gustin and Tillotson, 453, 454; of San- 
derson and Berkeley, 527. 

Philip, the Magnanimous, Landgrave of 
Hesse, his polygamy, 497-501. 

Philosophy : what, 5, 14 ; what it means 
in Britain, 272, 622* ; notices of its 
fortune in Germany, 4 ; in France 2, 
38 ; in Scotland, 3 ; study of, its uti- 
lity, 39 ; even to be refuted, must be 
studied, 695 ; man philosophises, as 
he thinks, 695 ; a philosophy of man 
prerequisite to a philosophy of God, 
696; self-knowledge, the doctrine of 
humility, 696. See Conditioned. Six 
schemes of, — Natural Realism, Abso- 
lute Identity, Idealism, Materialism, 
Nihilism, Cosmothetic Idealism, 54, 
also 192, sq. ; terms Philosophy and 
Philosophical, applied in England, 
and especially in Cambridge, to phy- 
sical and mathematical science, 186, 
272, 310, 320, 622*. 

Physic contemned by Physicians, 252. 

Physical study less improving to the 
mind, 40, 690 ; Bacon's testimony to 
this, 690, 730 ; tends to irreligion, 
301, sq., et alibi. 

Pillans (Prof.), defence of classical in- 
struction, 328, 343, 347. 

Pisa, University of, 358. 

Plato, inscription over his school — (' Let 
no one ignorant of geometry here 
enter'), a comparatively modern fic- 
tion, 271, 311. 

Ploucquet, his Canon of Syllogism, 630*, 
649*. 

Polygamy permissible, an original doc- 
trine of the Lutheran Reformers, 497- 
501. 

Pope (Alexander), illustrated, 605. 

Popular Education, now determined in 
England by the Reform Bill, 535- 
539; its progress in France, 540-542 ; 
should be made obligatory in this 
country as in Germany, 548; semi- 
naries in Germany for the training of 



'56 



INDEX. 



schoolmasters (Normal Schools), 557- 
562; in Prussia, 543-573. 

Presentative (or Intuitive) and Repre- 
sentative knowledge, 51, sq. 

Price (Mr Bonamy), 715. 

Proctors, Oxford, were allowed the 
salaries of the professorships, which 
they co-operated in illegally suppress- 
ing, 445, sq. 

Professorial and Tutorial Systems com- 
pared, 711, sq. 

Professorial Examination for Degrees 
always worthless, if exclusive, 626- 
644, 731. 

Proposition. See Logic. 

Protension. See Time. 

Prussian popular education, 543-573. 

Psellus (Michael the younger), not the 
author of the Synopsis Organi, 126. 

Psychology, only a developed conscious- 
ness, 46. See Philosophy. 

Pythagorean philosophers ; the frag- 
ments and treatises under their name, 
all spurious, 138. 



Qualities of Matter, Primary, Secundo- 
primary, and Secondary, 54, 83. 



Rationalism (properly Intellectualism), 
4 ; as a scheme of philosophy, to 
Kant a mere delusion, 5. 

Ravaisson (M.), 602. 

Reason and Consequent, law of, to be 
excluded from Logic, 158, alibi; is 
only in Logic an evolution of the law 
of Non- Contradiction, ib. 

Regent and Non-regent (terms not un- 
derstood in the English Universities), 
explained, 391, 447. 

Reid, his doctrine of Perception, 24-97. 

(General), his trust, 385, 641. 

Relativity, the principal Condition of 
thinking, 579, sq. 

Remi (Abraham), a verse of, 6. 

Repetition, as an exercise, 682, sq. 

Representation, properly, only of what 
can be actually and adequately ima- 
gined. See Conception. 

Representative knowledge, 51, 56. 

Renchlin: his character, 211; his rela- 
tion to the Epistolge Obscurorum Vir- 
orum, 213 ; an unedited letter by, 
236 ; on this letter, see Addenda. 

Royer-Collard, his character, 4. 

Rubianus (Crotus). See Epistolse O. V. 

Ruhnkenius, 697. 



Saint Hilaire (M. Barthelemy), 140, 
145, 150. 

Sanderson (Bishop), his Logicse Com- 
pendium, 12;*) ; quoted. 687. 



! Scaliger (Joseph Justus) : his paramount 
learning, 283, 363, alibi ; his verses on 
the text of his father, touching the 
limitation of our knowledge, 606. 

(Julius Cassar) : an Oxonian, 

437 ; on the wisdom of voluntary igno- 
rance, &c, 37, 606, 612 ; on disputa- 
tion, 682. 

Scepticism, what, 85. 

Schelling, his doctrine of the Uncon- 
ditioned, 18 ; refutation of and by 
Cousin and Hegel, 23. 

Schleiermacher on academical patron- 
age, 371 ; quoted, 701. 

Schoolmen, iguorantly despised, 142. 

Schools, Scottish Grammar Schools: 
greatly too few, and the Universities 
thus brought to attempt their supply, 
in vain, 340, sq. ; the bad organiza- 
tion of their classes, 345. 

Scots, their character for philosophical 
and general talent, 117, 118, 378, sq. 

Scottish : — Philosophy, 3 ; Theology has 
for two centuries been null, 335-339, 
379 ; Church, its attempts to import 
from Holland learned divines, 338 ; 
its Veto Act, 339 ; Grammar Schools, 
deficient in numbers, 431 ; defects of 
their classes, 345 ; Law, 332 ; Medi- 
cine, 333 ; Scholarship and classical 
training, 340-343, 379, 380; Univer- 
sities, 371-385; Popular Education, as 
inferior to that of Germany, as supe- 
rior to that of England, 556. See 
Schools. 

Self and Not- self, as a condition of 
thought, 579. 

Self activity, at once the mean and the 
end of education, indeed, of all know- 
ledge, 39, sq., 677, sq., 682, sq., alibi. 

Seneca, quoted 675, 687, et passim. 

Sewell (Rev. Mr), 700. 

Social study, 688. 

Space, or Extension, known only as 
conditioned, 28, 29; as a condition 
of thought, 582. 

Stahl (George Ernest), 250. 

Stewart (Dugald), 144, 182, 190, 200, 
289, 295, 298, 305. 

Strauss, the Hegelian divine, 696. 

Subject, Subjective, and Object, Objec- 
tive : meaning of terms, 5 ; as a condi- 
tion of thought, 579, 580 ; distinction 
very vague and vacillating, 5, 580. 

Subscription to articles of faith, its obli- 
gation frustrated by the English Uni- 
versities, 454, 521, 522. 

Substance and Phenomenon : ipso facto. 
conditioned, 29; as a condition of 
thought, 580 ; meaning of term, 608. 

Syllogism. See Logic. 



INDEX. 



Teaching, as an exercise towards learn- 
ing, 345, 685, sq. 

Tennemann, translation of his Manual 
by Johnson, 98-115. 

Terms. See Logic. 

Tests, religious. See Universities, Eng- 
lish, and Subscription. 

Theology: supposes scholarship, 333, 
sq., 379, sq. ; Scottish, long therefore 
null, 335, sq., 379 ; not independent 
of philosophy; English, therefore, has 
been long very feeble, 699. 

Thinking. See Thought. 

Tholosanns, his testimony as to meaning 
of University, 481. 

Thomson (Prof. John), his character 
and life of Cullen, 240-256. 

(Kev. William), 126, 163, 

631* 632*. 

Thought, Positive and Negative, 578 ; 
Conditions of positive thought, 577, 
sq.; to think is to condition, 141. 

Time* or Protension, or Duration, 
known only as conditioned, 28, 29 ; 
as a condition of thought, 581. 

Truth, speculative, an end, not ultimate, 
but subordinate to the cultivation of 
mind by its speculation, 39-41. 

Tutor, in Oxford the office of, by statute 
open to all graduates, even to Bache- 
lors of Arts, 396, 417; nor need the 
Tutor and Pupil be of the same 
House, 466 ; Table of Tutorial emi- 
nence throughout the Oxford Houses, 
655 ; Tutorial and Professorial sys- 
tems compared, 711-716 ; condition 
of Tutor, should be a highest gradua- 
tion of honour, 713. See Universities 
English. 



Unconditioned (the): what, 12; incon- 
ceivable, 14, 20, 21; not the indiffer- 
ence of the Absolute and Infinite, 
which, as contradictories, exclude 
each other, 21, 28; Kant's doctrine 
of, 15; Schelling's doctrine of, 18; He- 
gel's doctrine of, 23; Cousin's doc- 
trine of, 23 ; Author's doctrine of, 12, 
17, 577, sq.; doctrine of the Condi- 
tioned a contrast to the doctrine of the 
Unconditioned, 584. 

Absolute (the), what properly, 12 ; 
what etymologically, 13. 

Infinite (the), what properly, 13, 
21, 26 ; verses on, 37. 

Testimonies quoted on the Uncon- 
ditioned (beside Cousin, Kant, Schel- 
ling, Hegel, Oken), Aristotle 26, Au- 
gustin 14, Jacob Boehme 21, Budd- 
hists 21, Goethe 19, Frederic Jacobi 
19, 21, Joannes Sarisbnriensis 20, 



Manilius 19, Orpheus 22, St Paul 15, 
Platonists and Fathers 20, 21, Ploti- 
nus 19, Plutarch 22, St Prosper 19, 
Rejected Addresses 21, Remi 6, Sca- 
liger (Julius Caesar) 37, 606, Seneca 19, 
Varro 21, &c. — See also Ignorantia 
Docta, and Knowledge, relativity of, 
and Occult Causes. 

University : meaning of the term, 476- 
484 ; ends which it should accomplish, 
672-694 ; properly, the general school 
for liberal instruction, the Faculty of 
Arts ; the other Faculties being only 
special Schools, 673. 

Universities, Old and New contrasted, 
681 ; British, all need regeneration 
or reform, 642, 708, et alibi. 

Universities, English : their present ille- 
gality, 386-434, 435-463 ; consist of 
the University proper and of the Col- 
leges, 389 ; the University not a con- 
geries of Colleges, 398, 456, 468, 510 ; 
a right Collegial or Tutorial system 
in combination with a right University 
or Professorial system affords the con- 
dition of a perfect academical disci- 
pline, 402. — Oxford (more particular- 
ly), its present illegality, 387 ; history 
of its legal system, 390-397 ; history 
of its illegal system, 397-434 ; these 
contrasted, 441, 442 ; illegal suppres- 
sion of the University or Professorial, 
and illegal intrusion of the Collegial 
orTutorial instruction, 392-402 ; vices 
of the latter, as actually constituted, 
397-402 ; relative importance of Col- 
legiate institutions — in the Italian 
Universities, 404 — in Paris, 404-406 — 
in Louvain, 406, 645, sq. — in German 
Universities, 407 -410 — history of their 
rise and progress in the English Uni- 
versities, 410-433 ; how the Halls fell, 
and from their ruins the Colleges 
arose, 413-417 ; how the Tutor super- 
seded the Professor, 417-426 ; how 
this was accomplished through a vio- 
lation of oath and statute by the Col- 
legial Heads, 426-434, 442-452 ; by 
them perjury enforced on all the mem- 
bers of the University, 426-430, 528, 
453, 534 ; this common to Cambridge 
and its Heads, 419 ; the obligation of 
subscription to religious articles thus 
sublated, 454, 521, 522; whilst the 
value of the University education was 
lowered, its expense was raised, for 
the profit of the Colleges, and to keep 
the academical numbers down to their 
means of accommodation, 422 ; a re- 
form must come from without, 457 ; 
testimonies of Crevier, Locke, and 



758 



Agrippa to this, 433, 457, 458. Re- 
viewer's allegations against the go- 
vernors of the English Universities 
vindicated, and his charges only those 
of the statutes themselves, 431-434. 
Table of the Oxford Houses, in the 
order of their comparative efficiency, 
as organs of education, 654, 655 ; plan 
for the improvement of collegial and 
academical instruction, 710-739. Eng- 
lish Universities, how and how not 
wealthy, 692, sq. 
Universities : English, on admission of 
Dissenters to, 464-508, 509-534; 
superior liberality in this respect of 
the Italian Universities, which ad- 
mitted Protestants, even as Professors, 
359, sq. ; claim of Dissenters for admis- 
sion into the public University of the 
strongest and clearest, 464, 469 ; not 
so clear and strong into the Colleges, 
465-468, 518 ; ignorant confusion of 
the University with the Colleges 
generally prevalent, 468, 469, 510 ; 
game at cross-purposes by the friends 
and opponents of this measure, 465, 
468, 469, 509, sq. ; how Dissenters 
to be admitted without violating prin- 
ciple of domestic superintendence, 
470-475 ; and without violating prin- 
ciple of religious instruction, 475-576, 
484-486. Do religious Tests in Uni- 
versities ensure in them religious 
teachers? — the negative maintained, 
486-508 ; these of old abandoned in 
the Italian Universities, and latterly, 
after the German, in the Dutch, 489. 
Have the Heads of the English Uni- 
versities proved faithful Trustees ? 
No, 512-523. Are the academic 
oaths obligatory and permanently 
obligatory on all members of the 
English Universities to resist the 



INDEX. 

admission of Dissenters ? 523-531 ; 
Oxford Heads agreed to propose a 
repeal of the academic tests, and why 
their resolution was rescinded, 523. 
University Patronage : theory and his- 
tory of, 348-385 ; character of this 
trust, 349 ; its end, 350 ; conditions 
of its proper organization, 352-357 ; 
in Padua, 357 — in Pisa, 358 — in Ley- 
den, 359-365 — in German universi- 
ties, 365 — inGoettingen,367; German 
authorities, Michaelis 368, Meiners 
369, Schleiermacher371 ; in the Scot- 
tish universities, 371 ; by a Munici- 
pality, 372-375 ; here patrons solicited 
as for a favour, and this not felt as 
an insult, 374, 624 ; by University it- 
self, 375-380 ; by the Crown, 380 ; 
systems of Scottish patronage have 
wrought as ill as possible, 378-380 ; 
patronage by Curators the best, 381 ; 
plan for their appointment in Edin- 
burgh, 382- 385 ; recommendation of 
by Burgh Commissioners, 625, sq. 
See 621 sq.,/or Edinburgh. 

Vernunft and Verstand, modern German 

reversal of, 4, 6. 
Vives, quoted 683, 687, and elsewhere. 



Ward (Mr G. R. M.), his translation of 
the Oxford Statutes and Preface, 534 ; 
extracts from, 670, sq. 

Whately (Archbishop), his Elements of 
Logic, 125-169. 

Whewell (Rev. Dr) on the study of Ma- 
thematics, 257-327; his letter, with 
replies, 314-327. 

"Whole and Part. See Logic. 

Wilson (Professor John), 586. 

Woolley (Rev. Dr), 158. 

Wyttenbach, 683, 697. 



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